1992 >>>>>>: TV: EVENTS AT DRIMAGHLEEN (BBC TV) 1991

Synopsis: "In Drimaghleen in a remote part of Ireland, Maureen McDowd, her boyfriend, and his mother are found shot dead in a farmyard. Her family are devastated and the village shocked by the killings, but the police findings are accepted and unquestioned by them and the village priest, Father Sallins, the concensus being that the old woman shot Maureen in a jealous rage, her son then shot her and turned the gun on himself. However, a year later, TV jouranlist Hetty Fortune arrives with a camera crew to make a film, the outsiders wheedling their way into the community and locals' homes and piecing together a version of events that totally overturns the believed facts and causes great pain and upset." (BFI Film & TV Database)

Events at Drimaghleen began life as a short story by William Trevor. He subsequently adapted it for radio and it was produced for broadcast by David Hitchinson for the BBC World Service. In that production TP played the part of the parish priest, Father Sallins, who is also the narrator for the events that unfold in the story. It was voted the best radio play of the year for 1988 in the prestigious Sony Radio Awards.

By 1991 a tv adaptation was produced for BBC Northern Ireland (in co-production with RTE) by Robert Cooper. TP was once again cast as the priest.

This could be aptly described as one of TP's 'softer' roles, such as the kind that came to him more in his later years.

TP as 'Father Sallins'

He plays the parish priest of Drimaghleen who comes into conflict with the 'outsiders', the TV reporters who seek out a scandal and a potential cover up. Although not necessarily complicit in any concealment himself, he sees no benefit in disturbing the souls and the memories of the departed. Fr.Sallins is no 'Murphy Report' cleric, but rather a worldly and human pastor in a rural backwater.

He carries a heavy heart in this drama as he stands between the assumed right of the larger world to know the true course of events at Drimaghleen and the need, or otherwise, for that world to know.