Ros na Rún
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Ros na Rún is an Irish soap opera produced for Irish language TV channel TG4.
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[edit] Show history
Previously shown on RTÉ One, Ros na Rún began its tenth season in September 2005. The title plays on the double meaning of the Irish word rún, which has a basic meaning of 'secret' but also has a long history as a term of endearment, similar to "honey", "sweetheart", or "darling". Ros can mean either "a wood or wooded headland" or "a headland or promontory", so the title can mean either "Wood/Headland of the Secrets" or "Wood/Headland of the Sweethearts".
Ros na Rún is also shown on WYBE public television in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States and on UK terrestrial Freeview Scottish Gaelic channel TeleG with Scottish Gaelic subtitling.
[edit] Show facts
- It is the only soap in the world which is produced in the Irish language (although it runs English subtitles)
- The show is set in western County Galway, near the city of Galway.
- It has dealt with many different storylines, including domestic violence, infidelity, theft, arson, abortion and rape.
- The show runs on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 8:30pm on TG4, with an omnibus or "Ollchlár" edition at 10:30pm on Sunday nights.
[edit] Characters and settings
Ros na Rún retains many of the characters from the show's inception; the inhabitants of the village, however, are usually best known by their first names. Tadhg and Angela Ó Direáin are the owners of the public house "Tigh Thaidhg" (meaning "the house of Tadhg"), although the pair are now divorced and locked in an acrimonious feud. Mícheál Seoige is a labourer and fisherman whose second wife, Pauline died of cancer. His first wife, Berni, still lives in the village however, and runs the cafe "Cúl Chaint" (literal translation: "corner talk" although it is taken more to mean "gossip"). There are many other characters, past and present.
[edit] The Irish language
All conversations and scenes in the soap take place in the Irish language, still spoken in Spiddal, where the show is filmed, and parts of Kerry, Galway, Meath, Cork, Donegal, and the Aran Islands. Most of the actors/actresses in the show are native Irish speakers, while those that are not are always fluent in the language. The dialect used in the show is mostly the Connacht dialect of Irish, although there are some characters from Donegal. The Munster dialect is spoken by An tAthair David (Father David).
The show has come under fire for encouraging the Anglicisation of the Irish language; examples include the regular usage of "Hello" or "Hi" in place of "Dia Duit", the use of English phrases such as "For God's sake" and even "Sorry" instead of the Irish "Ta bron orm"; on the other hand, the show has re-introduced the Irish language in modern and popular form to areas of the country where it is not spoken and it can help in learning the language. Many would also argue it is much more satisfying and, at times, humorous to hear the characters converse rapidly in the Irish language and hear the Irish idioms and seanfhocail (proverbs).
[edit] Viewing figures and critics
Ros na Rún performs consistently well in the viewing figures, often among the top ten programmes of TG4 in the week where there is no sporting activity. Almost always the soap is among the top ten Irish language programming for the station. The typical viewing figures for a weekday episode are around 50,000; the omnibus usually pulls around 60,000 or 6.5% of the Sunday night audience share.
Critically the show performs very well, much better than the only other Irish soap on air, the English language Fair City on RTÉ One, although the latter has higher ratings. The acting on Ros na Rún is widely considered to be much better despite having a much smaller pool of actors to choose from, while the storylines are often teased out and left to simmer in a style very different from that of Fair City, which tends to take up and drop storylines quickly.
