Glenroe
Encyclopedia
Glenroe was an Irish
television
drama
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
. The programme was a spin-off
from Bracken
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
and the Church of Ireland
Rector
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
.
Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
show, Ballykissangel
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
went on to join the cast of the TG4
drama series
Ros na Rún
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
and U2
's two concerts at Slane
.
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|||colspan="4" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Glenroe was an Irish
television
drama
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
. The programme was a spin-off
from Bracken
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
and the Church of Ireland
Rector
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
.
Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
show, Ballykissangel
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
went on to join the cast of the TG4
drama series
Ros na Rún
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
and U2
's two concerts at Slane
.
|-
! Season
! style="text-align:left" | Season Premiere
! style="text-align:left" | Season Finale
! style="text-align:left" | TV Season
! Viewer
Rank (#)
! Viewers
(in '000)
|-
! Season 15
| September, 1997
| May, 1998
| 1997–1998
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 662
|-
! Season 16
| September, 1998
| May, 1999
| 1998–1999
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 638
|-
! Season 17
| September, 1999
| May, 2000
| 1999–2000
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 635
|-
! Season 18
| September, 2000
| May, 2001
| 2000–2001
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 589
|}
|- align=center
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
|-
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | A screenshot of Miley (left) and Dinny (right) in 1983
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | Mary McDermott-Moran in 1983
|}
|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
|Character || Actor || Character Duration
|-
|Dinny Byrne || Joe Lynch || 1983–2000
|-
|Miley Byrne || Mick Lally
|| 1983–2001
|-
|Biddy Byrne || Mary McEvoy
|| 1983–2000
|-
|Dick Moran || Emmet Bergin || 1983–2001
|-
|Mary McDermott-Moran || Geraldine Plunkett || 1983–2001
|-
|Stephen Brennan || Robert Carrickford ||
|-
|Father Tim Devereux || Donall Farmer ||
|-
|Teasy McDaid || Maureen Toal ||
|-
|George Manning || Alan Stanford
||
|-
|Michelle Haughey || Isobel Mahon ||
|-
|Blackie Connors || Liam Heffernan ||
|-
|Sergeant Roche || Paul Bennett
||
|-
|Fidelma Kelly || Eunice MacMenamin ||
|-
|Joseph Timlin || John-Paul McGarry ||
|-
|Aileen Synnot || Laura Howard
||
|-
|Nuala Brennan née Maher || Carmel Callan ||
|-
|Kevin Haughey|| Liam Carney ||
|-
|Sylvie Dolan || David Kelly
||
|-
|Uncle Peter || Cyril Cusack
||
|-
|Dr. David Hanlon || Mario Rosenstock
||
|-
|Terry Kileen || Kate Thompson
||
|-
|Rev. George Black || Enda Oates
||
|-
|Dan Reilly || Joe McKinney
|| 1998–2001
|-
|Catherine Daly || Louise Kerr ||
|-
|Conor Sheehy || Tim Murphy
||
|-
|Fiona March Black || Lucy Vigne-Welch ||
|-
| Bernadette Timlin || Barbara Griffin ||
|}
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Glenroe was an Irish
television
drama
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
. The programme was a spin-off
from Bracken
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
and the Church of Ireland
Rector
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
.
Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
show, Ballykissangel
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
went on to join the cast of the TG4
drama series
Ros na Rún
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
and U2
's two concerts at Slane
.
|-
! Season
! style="text-align:left" | Season Premiere
! style="text-align:left" | Season Finale
! style="text-align:left" | TV Season
! Viewer
Rank (#)
! Viewers
(in '000)
|-
! Season 15
| September, 1997
| May, 1998
| 1997–1998
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 662
|-
! Season 16
| September, 1998
| May, 1999
| 1998–1999
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 638
|-
! Season 17
| September, 1999
| May, 2000
| 1999–2000
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 635
|-
! Season 18
| September, 2000
| May, 2001
| 2000–2001
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 589
|}
|- align=center
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
|-
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | A screenshot of Miley (left) and Dinny (right) in 1983
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | Mary McDermott-Moran in 1983
|}
|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
|Character || Actor || Character Duration
|-
|Dinny Byrne || Joe Lynch || 1983–2000
|-
|Miley Byrne || Mick Lally
|| 1983–2001
|-
|Biddy Byrne || Mary McEvoy
|| 1983–2000
|-
|Dick Moran || Emmet Bergin || 1983–2001
|-
|Mary McDermott-Moran || Geraldine Plunkett || 1983–2001
|-
|Stephen Brennan || Robert Carrickford ||
|-
|Father Tim Devereux || Donall Farmer ||
|-
|Teasy McDaid || Maureen Toal ||
|-
|George Manning || Alan Stanford
||
|-
|Michelle Haughey || Isobel Mahon ||
|-
|Blackie Connors || Liam Heffernan ||
|-
|Sergeant Roche || Paul Bennett
||
|-
|Fidelma Kelly || Eunice MacMenamin ||
|-
|Joseph Timlin || John-Paul McGarry ||
|-
|Aileen Synnot || Laura Howard
||
|-
|Nuala Brennan née Maher || Carmel Callan ||
|-
|Kevin Haughey|| Liam Carney ||
|-
|Sylvie Dolan || David Kelly
||
|-
|Uncle Peter || Cyril Cusack
||
|-
|Dr. David Hanlon || Mario Rosenstock
||
|-
|Terry Kileen || Kate Thompson
||
|-
|Rev. George Black || Enda Oates
||
|-
|Dan Reilly || Joe McKinney
|| 1998–2001
|-
|Catherine Daly || Louise Kerr ||
|-
|Conor Sheehy || Tim Murphy
||
|-
|Fiona March Black || Lucy Vigne-Welch ||
|-
| Bernadette Timlin || Barbara Griffin ||
|}
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
RTÉ One
RTÉ One is the flagship television channel of Raidió Teilifís Éireann , and it is the most popular and most watched television channel in Ireland. It was launched as Telefís Éireann on 31 December 1961, it was renamed RTÉ Television in 1966, and it was renamed as RTÉ One upon the launch of RTÉ...
. The programme was a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
from Bracken
Bracken (TV series)
Bracken was an Irish television soap opera broadcast from 1978 to 1982 on RTÉ One in Ireland. It mainly centred about rural life in and around County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. The main stars of the show were Gabriel Byrne and Niall Tóibín...
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
The Riordans
The Riordans was the second Irish soap opera made by Raidio Telefís Éireann . It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny...
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes is an Irish playwright and screenwriter. Originally from Northern Ireland, he is now a resident of the Republic of Ireland...
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
and the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
Rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The show
Title sequence
The programme was noted for its original title sequence, which featured the words "Gleann Rua" in Gaelic script morph into "Glenroe" over a series of rural images.The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
Horslips
Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs based on traditional Irish jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts....
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
Moya Brennan
Moya Brennan, born Máire Ní Bhraonáin , also known as Máire Brennan , is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, harpist, and philanthropist who began performing professionally in 1970, when her family formed the band Clannad, and is now widely considered as the "First Lady of Celtic Music"...
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
Dundalk
Dundalk is the county town of County Louth in Ireland. It is situated where the Castletown River flows into Dundalk Bay. The town is close to the border with Northern Ireland and equi-distant from Dublin and Belfast. The town's name, which was historically written as Dundalgan, has associations...
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She had appeared in more than 30 films and television roles...
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
Irish Singles Chart
The Irish Singles Chart is Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on behalf of the IRMA by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured...
.
Plot
The programme focused on a cast of characters living in a rural area near the village pub. The main characters were Miley Byrne and Biddy McDermott whose courtship and marriage formed the centerpiece of the action during the early years. Their parents were also heavily featured in the storylines. Miley's father Dinny Byrne was a chancer and Biddy's mother, who was widowed early in the series, conducted a long-running relationship with Dick Moran, local solicitor. Dick occasionally had other affairs such as that with Terry Kileen.Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
First Communion
The First Communion, or First Holy Communion, is a Catholic Church ceremony. It is the colloquial name for a person's first reception of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Catholics believe this event to be very important, as the Eucharist is one of the central focuses of the Catholic Church...
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
End
On 19 January 2001, despite claims four years previously that it could run for another ten years, RTÉ announced that Glenroe was to end after eighteen series. The final episode of the Irish soap was to be broadcast the following May. RTÉ's Director of Television, Cathal Goan, said it had been clear for some time that Glenroe was "coming to the end of its natural life". This announcement came after a sequence of negative events involving cast members. Mary McEvoy (Biddy) resigned (her character was subsequently killed off in a road accident), Joe Lynch (Dinny) quit after being "shamefully treated" and offered "small potatoes" when he asked for a pay rise and by Mick Lally opted to split his schedule between RTÉ and the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
show, Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel is a BBC television drama set in Ireland, produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland. The original story revolved around a young English Roman Catholic priest as he became part of a rural community. It ran for six series, which were first broadcast on BBC One in the UK from 1996 to 2001...
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
``I was terrible restricted in RTÉ they wouldn't let me off for anything, even commercials.``He was also upset that he was not to get a pension but died soon afterwards.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
The Clinic (TV series)
The Clinic is an award-winning Irish primetime television medical drama series produced by Parallel Film Productions for RTÉ. It debuted on RTÉ One in 2003 to positive reviews and proved to be one of the network's most popular shows. The show ran for seven seasons between September 2003 to November...
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
Mick Lally
Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s...
went on to join the cast of the TG4
TG4
TG4 is a public service broadcaster for Irish language speakers. The channel has been on-air since 31 October 1996 in the Republic of Ireland and since April 2005 in Northern Ireland....
drama series
Dramatic programming
Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún is an Irish soap opera produced for Irish language TV channel TG4. It broadcasts for 35 weeks of the year, airing 2 episodes each week.It airs in Ireland, Scotland and the United States.-Show history:...
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
Evening Herald
The Evening Herald is a mid-market tabloid evening newspaper published in Dublin, Ireland by Independent News & Media. It is published Monday-Saturday, and has three editions — City Edition, City Final Edition and National Edition...
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
and U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's two concerts at Slane
Slane Concert
Slane Concert is a concert held most years since 1981 in the grounds of Slane Castle near Slane, County Meath, in Ireland. The castle is owned by Henry Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, who was the Earl of Mountcharles until 2009. Slane lies between Navan and Drogheda, about 45 km northwest...
.
Ratings
| Season | Season Premiere | Season Finale | TV Season | Viewer Rank (#) |
Viewers (in '000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Season 15 | September, 1997 | May, 1998 | 1997–1998 | #2 | 662 |
| Season 16 | September, 1998 | May, 1999 | 1998–1999 | #3 | 638 |
| Season 17 | September, 1999 | May, 2000 | 1999–2000 | #3 | 635 |
| Season 18 | September, 2000 | May, 2001 | 2000–2001 | #2 | 589 |
- The series final episode attracted 591,000 viewers on Sunday May 6, 2001. At its height Glenroe achieved nearly one million viewers, during the 1990s it often had 700,000 viewers.
Characters
| |
|
|---|---|
| A screenshot of Miley (left) and Dinny (right) in 1983 | Mary McDermott-Moran in 1983 |
Main characters
| Character | Actor | Character Duration |
| Dinny Byrne | Joe Lynch | 1983–2000 |
| Miley Byrne | Mick Lally Mick Lally Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s... |
1983–2001 |
| Biddy Byrne | Mary McEvoy Mary McEvoy Mary McEvoy is an Irish actress. She is recognised by television viewers for having played the role of Biddy Byrne in Glenroe from 1983-2000... |
1983–2000 |
| Dick Moran | Emmet Bergin | 1983–2001 |
| Mary McDermott-Moran | Geraldine Plunkett | 1983–2001 |
| Stephen Brennan | Robert Carrickford | |
| Father Tim Devereux | Donall Farmer | |
| Teasy McDaid | Maureen Toal | |
| George Manning | Alan Stanford Alan Stanford Alan Stanford is a well known Irish-based actor and director.-Personal life:Stanford has lived in Ireland since 1969. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.... |
|
| Michelle Haughey | Isobel Mahon | |
| Blackie Connors | Liam Heffernan | |
| Sergeant Roche | Paul Bennett Paul Bennett Paul Bennett may refer to:*Paul Bennett , author and typographer*Paul Bennett , Canadian football player*Paul Bennett , English soccer player... |
|
| Fidelma Kelly | Eunice MacMenamin | |
| Joseph Timlin | John-Paul McGarry | |
| Aileen Synnot | Laura Howard Laura Howard Laura Howard is an English actress. She is probably best known for her role as Cully Barnaby in the long-running British crime-mystery drama Midsomer Murders.... |
|
| Nuala Brennan née Maher | Carmel Callan | |
| Kevin Haughey | Liam Carney | |
| Sylvie Dolan | David Kelly David Kelly (actor) David Kelly is an Irish actor, who has been in regular film and television work since the 1950s.-Acting career:Playing everything from Beckett to Shakespeare, he has appeared in Theatre, TV and film constantly since 1959... |
|
| Uncle Peter | Cyril Cusack Cyril Cusack Cyril James Cusack was an Irish actor, who appeared in more than 90 films.-Early life:Cusack was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, the son of Alice Violet , an actress, and James Walter Cusack, a sergeant in the Natal mounted police. His parents separated when he was young and his mother took... |
|
| Dr. David Hanlon | Mario Rosenstock Mario Rosenstock Mario Rosenstock born 31 August 1971, is an Irish actor, comedian, impressionist and musician who is best known for his parody music singles and his role in the Gift Grub comedy series on Irish radio station Today FM.... |
|
| Terry Kileen | Kate Thompson Kate Thompson (romantic novelist) Kate Thompson is an Northern Irish actress and romantic novelist who also writes as Pixie Pirelli . She was born in Belfast and studied English and French at Trinity College, Dublin. She spent many years as an actress in theatre and television, most notably in the Irish drama serial Glenroe... |
|
| Rev. George Black | Enda Oates Enda Oates Enda Oates , occasionally credited as Enda Oats, is an Irish stage, film, and television actor. He has received attention for his stagework, but is best known to Irish television audiences as the Reverend George Black in the long running series Glenroe for RTE, and as Barreller Casey in the sitcom... |
|
| Dan Reilly | Joe McKinney Joe McKinney Joe McKinney is an Irish stage, screen/television actor and voice-over artist.Dublin-born McKinney trained and worked as a hairdresser for four years, before joining fringe theatre... |
1998–2001 |
| Catherine Daly | Louise Kerr | |
| Conor Sheehy | Tim Murphy Tim Murphy Timothy John Murphy is a former politician and was the chief of staff of the Canadian Prime Minister's Office under Paul Martin's government.-Background:... |
|
| Fiona March Black | Lucy Vigne-Welch | |
| Bernadette Timlin | Barbara Griffin |
Broadcasting details
The show was also successful outside Ireland, although Glenroe was not networked, 13 of the 14 ITV regions had transmitted the series in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
- In December 1995, as part of a soap opera-themed weekend, Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
broadcast an episode of Glenroe.
- The entire series also aired on SBS One in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and it also aired on the now defunct Irish American Channel in the United States of America.
- During the late 1990s Glenroe was also shown on the Tara TelevisionTara TelevisionTara Television was an Irish cable and satellite channel aimed primarily at the Irish Diaspora living in Britain, it was set up in 1996 and began broadcasting a year later before being finally wound up in April 2002 by the High Court....
network in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
via cable and SkyDigital from 1997 to the closure of the station in 2002. Classic episodes were shown in the daytime and repeated in the early evenings on weekdays, and current episodes were simulcast with RTÉ on Sunday evenings during each season. Tara had reached the 1992/93 season of Glenroe at the time of the station's closure.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|||colspan="4" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Glenroe was an Irish
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
RTÉ One
RTÉ One is the flagship television channel of Raidió Teilifís Éireann , and it is the most popular and most watched television channel in Ireland. It was launched as Telefís Éireann on 31 December 1961, it was renamed RTÉ Television in 1966, and it was renamed as RTÉ One upon the launch of RTÉ...
. The programme was a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
from Bracken
Bracken (TV series)
Bracken was an Irish television soap opera broadcast from 1978 to 1982 on RTÉ One in Ireland. It mainly centred about rural life in and around County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. The main stars of the show were Gabriel Byrne and Niall Tóibín...
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
The Riordans
The Riordans was the second Irish soap opera made by Raidio Telefís Éireann . It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny...
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes is an Irish playwright and screenwriter. Originally from Northern Ireland, he is now a resident of the Republic of Ireland...
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
and the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
Rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The show
Title sequence
The programme was noted for its original title sequence, which featured the words "Gleann Rua" in Gaelic script morph into "Glenroe" over a series of rural images.The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
Horslips
Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs based on traditional Irish jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts....
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
Moya Brennan
Moya Brennan, born Máire Ní Bhraonáin , also known as Máire Brennan , is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, harpist, and philanthropist who began performing professionally in 1970, when her family formed the band Clannad, and is now widely considered as the "First Lady of Celtic Music"...
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
Dundalk
Dundalk is the county town of County Louth in Ireland. It is situated where the Castletown River flows into Dundalk Bay. The town is close to the border with Northern Ireland and equi-distant from Dublin and Belfast. The town's name, which was historically written as Dundalgan, has associations...
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She had appeared in more than 30 films and television roles...
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
Irish Singles Chart
The Irish Singles Chart is Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on behalf of the IRMA by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured...
.
Plot
The programme focused on a cast of characters living in a rural area near the village pub. The main characters were Miley Byrne and Biddy McDermott whose courtship and marriage formed the centerpiece of the action during the early years. Their parents were also heavily featured in the storylines. Miley's father Dinny Byrne was a chancer and Biddy's mother, who was widowed early in the series, conducted a long-running relationship with Dick Moran, local solicitor. Dick occasionally had other affairs such as that with Terry Kileen.Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
First Communion
The First Communion, or First Holy Communion, is a Catholic Church ceremony. It is the colloquial name for a person's first reception of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Catholics believe this event to be very important, as the Eucharist is one of the central focuses of the Catholic Church...
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
End
On 19 January 2001, despite claims four years previously that it could run for another ten years, RTÉ announced that Glenroe was to end after eighteen series. The final episode of the Irish soap was to be broadcast the following May. RTÉ's Director of Television, Cathal Goan, said it had been clear for some time that Glenroe was "coming to the end of its natural life". This announcement came after a sequence of negative events involving cast members. Mary McEvoy (Biddy) resigned (her character was subsequently killed off in a road accident), Joe Lynch (Dinny) quit after being "shamefully treated" and offered "small potatoes" when he asked for a pay rise and by Mick Lally opted to split his schedule between RTÉ and the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
show, Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel is a BBC television drama set in Ireland, produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland. The original story revolved around a young English Roman Catholic priest as he became part of a rural community. It ran for six series, which were first broadcast on BBC One in the UK from 1996 to 2001...
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
``I was terrible restricted in RTÉ they wouldn't let me off for anything, even commercials.``He was also upset that he was not to get a pension but died soon afterwards.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
The Clinic (TV series)
The Clinic is an award-winning Irish primetime television medical drama series produced by Parallel Film Productions for RTÉ. It debuted on RTÉ One in 2003 to positive reviews and proved to be one of the network's most popular shows. The show ran for seven seasons between September 2003 to November...
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
Mick Lally
Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s...
went on to join the cast of the TG4
TG4
TG4 is a public service broadcaster for Irish language speakers. The channel has been on-air since 31 October 1996 in the Republic of Ireland and since April 2005 in Northern Ireland....
drama series
Dramatic programming
Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún is an Irish soap opera produced for Irish language TV channel TG4. It broadcasts for 35 weeks of the year, airing 2 episodes each week.It airs in Ireland, Scotland and the United States.-Show history:...
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
Evening Herald
The Evening Herald is a mid-market tabloid evening newspaper published in Dublin, Ireland by Independent News & Media. It is published Monday-Saturday, and has three editions — City Edition, City Final Edition and National Edition...
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
and U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's two concerts at Slane
Slane Concert
Slane Concert is a concert held most years since 1981 in the grounds of Slane Castle near Slane, County Meath, in Ireland. The castle is owned by Henry Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, who was the Earl of Mountcharles until 2009. Slane lies between Navan and Drogheda, about 45 km northwest...
.
Ratings
{| class="wikitable" border="1"|-
! Season
! style="text-align:left" | Season Premiere
! style="text-align:left" | Season Finale
! style="text-align:left" | TV Season
! Viewer
Rank (#)
! Viewers
(in '000)
|-
! Season 15
| September, 1997
| May, 1998
| 1997–1998
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 662
|-
! Season 16
| September, 1998
| May, 1999
| 1998–1999
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 638
|-
! Season 17
| September, 1999
| May, 2000
| 1999–2000
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 635
|-
! Season 18
| September, 2000
| May, 2001
| 2000–2001
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 589
|}
- The series final episode attracted 591,000 viewers on Sunday May 6, 2001. At its height Glenroe achieved nearly one million viewers, during the 1990s it often had 700,000 viewers.
Characters
{| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #aaa"|- align=center
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
|-
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | A screenshot of Miley (left) and Dinny (right) in 1983
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | Mary McDermott-Moran in 1983
|}
Main characters
{| class="wikitable"|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
|Character || Actor || Character Duration
|-
|Dinny Byrne || Joe Lynch || 1983–2000
|-
|Miley Byrne || Mick Lally
Mick Lally
Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s...
|| 1983–2001
|-
|Biddy Byrne || Mary McEvoy
Mary McEvoy
Mary McEvoy is an Irish actress. She is recognised by television viewers for having played the role of Biddy Byrne in Glenroe from 1983-2000...
|| 1983–2000
|-
|Dick Moran || Emmet Bergin || 1983–2001
|-
|Mary McDermott-Moran || Geraldine Plunkett || 1983–2001
|-
|Stephen Brennan || Robert Carrickford ||
|-
|Father Tim Devereux || Donall Farmer ||
|-
|Teasy McDaid || Maureen Toal ||
|-
|George Manning || Alan Stanford
Alan Stanford
Alan Stanford is a well known Irish-based actor and director.-Personal life:Stanford has lived in Ireland since 1969. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London....
||
|-
|Michelle Haughey || Isobel Mahon ||
|-
|Blackie Connors || Liam Heffernan ||
|-
|Sergeant Roche || Paul Bennett
Paul Bennett
Paul Bennett may refer to:*Paul Bennett , author and typographer*Paul Bennett , Canadian football player*Paul Bennett , English soccer player...
||
|-
|Fidelma Kelly || Eunice MacMenamin ||
|-
|Joseph Timlin || John-Paul McGarry ||
|-
|Aileen Synnot || Laura Howard
Laura Howard
Laura Howard is an English actress. She is probably best known for her role as Cully Barnaby in the long-running British crime-mystery drama Midsomer Murders....
||
|-
|Nuala Brennan née Maher || Carmel Callan ||
|-
|Kevin Haughey|| Liam Carney ||
|-
|Sylvie Dolan || David Kelly
David Kelly (actor)
David Kelly is an Irish actor, who has been in regular film and television work since the 1950s.-Acting career:Playing everything from Beckett to Shakespeare, he has appeared in Theatre, TV and film constantly since 1959...
||
|-
|Uncle Peter || Cyril Cusack
Cyril Cusack
Cyril James Cusack was an Irish actor, who appeared in more than 90 films.-Early life:Cusack was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, the son of Alice Violet , an actress, and James Walter Cusack, a sergeant in the Natal mounted police. His parents separated when he was young and his mother took...
||
|-
|Dr. David Hanlon || Mario Rosenstock
Mario Rosenstock
Mario Rosenstock born 31 August 1971, is an Irish actor, comedian, impressionist and musician who is best known for his parody music singles and his role in the Gift Grub comedy series on Irish radio station Today FM....
||
|-
|Terry Kileen || Kate Thompson
Kate Thompson (romantic novelist)
Kate Thompson is an Northern Irish actress and romantic novelist who also writes as Pixie Pirelli . She was born in Belfast and studied English and French at Trinity College, Dublin. She spent many years as an actress in theatre and television, most notably in the Irish drama serial Glenroe...
||
|-
|Rev. George Black || Enda Oates
Enda Oates
Enda Oates , occasionally credited as Enda Oats, is an Irish stage, film, and television actor. He has received attention for his stagework, but is best known to Irish television audiences as the Reverend George Black in the long running series Glenroe for RTE, and as Barreller Casey in the sitcom...
||
|-
|Dan Reilly || Joe McKinney
Joe McKinney
Joe McKinney is an Irish stage, screen/television actor and voice-over artist.Dublin-born McKinney trained and worked as a hairdresser for four years, before joining fringe theatre...
|| 1998–2001
|-
|Catherine Daly || Louise Kerr ||
|-
|Conor Sheehy || Tim Murphy
Tim Murphy
Timothy John Murphy is a former politician and was the chief of staff of the Canadian Prime Minister's Office under Paul Martin's government.-Background:...
||
|-
|Fiona March Black || Lucy Vigne-Welch ||
|-
| Bernadette Timlin || Barbara Griffin ||
|}
Broadcasting details
The show was also successful outside Ireland, although Glenroe was not networked, 13 of the 14 ITV regions had transmitted the series in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
- In December 1995, as part of a soap opera-themed weekend, Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
broadcast an episode of Glenroe.
- The entire series also aired on SBS One in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and it also aired on the now defunct Irish American Channel in the United States of America.
- During the late 1990s Glenroe was also shown on the Tara TelevisionTara TelevisionTara Television was an Irish cable and satellite channel aimed primarily at the Irish Diaspora living in Britain, it was set up in 1996 and began broadcasting a year later before being finally wound up in April 2002 by the High Court....
network in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
via cable and SkyDigital from 1997 to the closure of the station in 2002. Classic episodes were shown in the daytime and repeated in the early evenings on weekdays, and current episodes were simulcast with RTÉ on Sunday evenings during each season. Tara had reached the 1992/93 season of Glenroe at the time of the station's closure.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
ITV Region
||colspan="4" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|Programme Schedule Pattern
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Start Date
||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|Glenroe was an Irish
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
series broadcast between September 1983 and May 2001 on RTÉ One
RTÉ One
RTÉ One is the flagship television channel of Raidió Teilifís Éireann , and it is the most popular and most watched television channel in Ireland. It was launched as Telefís Éireann on 31 December 1961, it was renamed RTÉ Television in 1966, and it was renamed as RTÉ One upon the launch of RTÉ...
. The programme was a spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
from Bracken
Bracken (TV series)
Bracken was an Irish television soap opera broadcast from 1978 to 1982 on RTÉ One in Ireland. It mainly centred about rural life in and around County Wicklow in the Republic of Ireland. The main stars of the show were Gabriel Byrne and Niall Tóibín...
, a short-lived RTÉ drama itself spun off from The Riordans
The Riordans
The Riordans was the second Irish soap opera made by Raidio Telefís Éireann . It ran from 1965 to 1979 and was set in the fictional townland of Leestown in County Kilkenny...
. Glenroe was broadcast on Sunday nights at 20.30, generally from September to May. The show was created, and written for much of its run, by Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes
Wesley Burrowes is an Irish playwright and screenwriter. Originally from Northern Ireland, he is now a resident of the Republic of Ireland...
. Glenroe was the first show to be subtitled by RTÉ, with a broadcast in 1991 starting the station's subtitling policy.
The programme centred on the lives of the people living in the fictional rural village of Glenroe in County Wicklow
County Wicklow
County Wicklow is a county in Ireland. It is part of the Mid-East Region and is also located in the province of Leinster. It is named after the town of Wicklow, which derives from the Old Norse name Víkingalág or Wykynlo. Wicklow County Council is the local authority for the county...
. The real-life village of Kilcoole was used to film the series. The main protagonists were the Byrne and McDermott/Moran families, related by the marriage of Miley Byrne to Biddy McDermott. Other characters included the Roman Catholic priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
and the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
Rector
Rector
The word rector has a number of different meanings; it is widely used to refer to an academic, religious or political administrator...
of the village (Tim Devereux and George Black respectively), Teasy McDaid, the proprietor of the local pub, Biddy's cousin Fidelma Kelly, and others.
It was axed in 2001.
The show
Title sequence
The programme was noted for its original title sequence, which featured the words "Gleann Rua" in Gaelic script morph into "Glenroe" over a series of rural images.The original title sequence was used for the 1983/84 series to the end of the 1992/93 series; and was replaced with a more up-to-date title sequence at the start of the 1993/94 series. Glenroes theme tune was that of a traditional Irish song called Cuaichín Ghleann Néifinn and was arranged by Jim Lockhart of Horslips
Horslips
Horslips are an Irish Celtic rock band that compose, arrange and perform songs based on traditional Irish jigs and reels. The group are regarded as 'founding fathers of Celtic rock' for their fusion of traditional Irish music with rock music and went on to inspire many local and international acts....
. The original version was used from the 1983/84 to the end of the 1992/93 series. A newly recorded version, arranged by Máire Ní Bhraonáin
Moya Brennan
Moya Brennan, born Máire Ní Bhraonáin , also known as Máire Brennan , is an Irish folk singer, songwriter, harpist, and philanthropist who began performing professionally in 1970, when her family formed the band Clannad, and is now widely considered as the "First Lady of Celtic Music"...
of Clannad, was introduced with the start of the 1993/94 series, and the changes to the title sequence.
There was excitement in Dundalk
Dundalk
Dundalk is the county town of County Louth in Ireland. It is situated where the Castletown River flows into Dundalk Bay. The town is close to the border with Northern Ireland and equi-distant from Dublin and Belfast. The town's name, which was historically written as Dundalgan, has associations...
on December 24, 1989 when the episode screened that evening featured two couples from the area who had won a prize from the People in Need Telethon to appear on the show. Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She had appeared in more than 30 films and television roles...
was in that episode. There was also lots of excitement for the famous Cork v Kilkenny hurling match that was played in Pairc Liam Mc Carthy in Ballygarvan, in County Cork in 1984. This match featured in the show when Miley travelled down to Cork to attend. He was asked at the last minute to throw in the sliotar at the start of the game.
A song from the series, The By-Road to Glenroe, performed by Mick Lally, was released as a single in Ireland in 1990, featuring the Jim Lockhart version of the theme tune as its B-side, and reached Number 1 in the Irish Singles Chart
Irish Singles Chart
The Irish Singles Chart is Ireland's music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on behalf of the IRMA by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured...
.
Plot
The programme focused on a cast of characters living in a rural area near the village pub. The main characters were Miley Byrne and Biddy McDermott whose courtship and marriage formed the centerpiece of the action during the early years. Their parents were also heavily featured in the storylines. Miley's father Dinny Byrne was a chancer and Biddy's mother, who was widowed early in the series, conducted a long-running relationship with Dick Moran, local solicitor. Dick occasionally had other affairs such as that with Terry Kileen.Religion was featured in the programme on numerous occasions. When Miley, a devout Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, believed his daughter, who had been critically ill with meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
, was saved by prayer and divine intervention while Biddy, who rarely went to Mass
Mass (liturgy)
"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
credited their doctor with her recovery. The parish priest, Father Tim Devereaux, was upset that nobody was listening to his pastoral advice and retired to embark on a round-the-world cruise with Shirley Manning, a widow of Protestant
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
and Jewish ancestry. One episode focused on how much money should be spent on a girl's First Communion
First Communion
The First Communion, or First Holy Communion, is a Catholic Church ceremony. It is the colloquial name for a person's first reception of the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Catholics believe this event to be very important, as the Eucharist is one of the central focuses of the Catholic Church...
dress.
In the fourteenth season, Tommy McArdle, the show's producer, introduced the travellers issue, frequently in the news at the time. The storyline involved Miley and Biddy trying to evict a family of travellers who parked their trailer on the edge of the farm. The episodes depicted the attitudes of some Irish people who believed that travellers were "stupid, dirty and dishonest". When two pet rabbits disappear the community suspects the travelers must have eaten them in a stew. Another storyline involved an extramarital affair between a traveller and an upper-middle-class local woman.
The final episode of the penultimate series saw the death of main character Biddy in a road accident involving her car and a tractor. The final series dealt largely with husband Miley's coming to terms with the loss of his wife and the struggles he faced in raising their two surviving daughters.
End
On 19 January 2001, despite claims four years previously that it could run for another ten years, RTÉ announced that Glenroe was to end after eighteen series. The final episode of the Irish soap was to be broadcast the following May. RTÉ's Director of Television, Cathal Goan, said it had been clear for some time that Glenroe was "coming to the end of its natural life". This announcement came after a sequence of negative events involving cast members. Mary McEvoy (Biddy) resigned (her character was subsequently killed off in a road accident), Joe Lynch (Dinny) quit after being "shamefully treated" and offered "small potatoes" when he asked for a pay rise and by Mick Lally opted to split his schedule between RTÉ and the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
show, Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel
Ballykissangel is a BBC television drama set in Ireland, produced in-house by BBC Northern Ireland. The original story revolved around a young English Roman Catholic priest as he became part of a rural community. It ran for six series, which were first broadcast on BBC One in the UK from 1996 to 2001...
.
Lynch criticised RTÉ for preventing him from doing other acting work alongside Glenroe.
``I was terrible restricted in RTÉ they wouldn't let me off for anything, even commercials.``He was also upset that he was not to get a pension but died soon afterwards.
The last episode of Glenroe was transmitted on 6 May 2001, attracting an audience of 591,000 viewers. Its place in the Sunday evening schedule was taken by On Home Ground, a drama series set at a fictional rural GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association
The Gaelic Athletic Association is an amateur Irish and international cultural and sporting organisation focused primarily on promoting Gaelic games, which include the traditional Irish sports of hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball and rounders...
club, which ran for two seasons from September 2001 until May 2003. Geraldine Plunkett also starred in the first 2 seasons of The Clinic
The Clinic (TV series)
The Clinic is an award-winning Irish primetime television medical drama series produced by Parallel Film Productions for RTÉ. It debuted on RTÉ One in 2003 to positive reviews and proved to be one of the network's most popular shows. The show ran for seven seasons between September 2003 to November...
, which ran for 7 seasons also on Sunday nights, it is expected that Raw will replace The Clinic in 2010 on Sunday nights, having being broadcast in that slot during January and February 2010 in its second season. Actor Mick Lally
Mick Lally
Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s...
went on to join the cast of the TG4
TG4
TG4 is a public service broadcaster for Irish language speakers. The channel has been on-air since 31 October 1996 in the Republic of Ireland and since April 2005 in Northern Ireland....
drama series
Dramatic programming
Dramatic programming in the UK, or television drama and television drama series in the US, is television program content that is scripted and fictional along the lines of √a traditional drama. This excludes, for example, sports television, television news, reality show and game shows, stand-up...
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún
Ros na Rún is an Irish soap opera produced for Irish language TV channel TG4. It broadcasts for 35 weeks of the year, airing 2 episodes each week.It airs in Ireland, Scotland and the United States.-Show history:...
in 2008.
The axing of Glenroe was remembered by Aoife Finneran in her review of that decade for the Evening Herald
Evening Herald
The Evening Herald is a mid-market tabloid evening newspaper published in Dublin, Ireland by Independent News & Media. It is published Monday-Saturday, and has three editions — City Edition, City Final Edition and National Edition...
. Included in the same review for that year were the September 11 attacks, foot-and-mouth crisis, death of George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
and U2
U2
U2 are an Irish rock band from Dublin. Formed in 1976, the group consists of Bono , The Edge , Adam Clayton , and Larry Mullen, Jr. . U2's early sound was rooted in post-punk but eventually grew to incorporate influences from many genres of popular music...
's two concerts at Slane
Slane Concert
Slane Concert is a concert held most years since 1981 in the grounds of Slane Castle near Slane, County Meath, in Ireland. The castle is owned by Henry Conyngham, 8th Marquess Conyngham, who was the Earl of Mountcharles until 2009. Slane lies between Navan and Drogheda, about 45 km northwest...
.
Ratings
{| class="wikitable" border="1"|-
! Season
! style="text-align:left" | Season Premiere
! style="text-align:left" | Season Finale
! style="text-align:left" | TV Season
! Viewer
Rank (#)
! Viewers
(in '000)
|-
! Season 15
| September, 1997
| May, 1998
| 1997–1998
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 662
|-
! Season 16
| September, 1998
| May, 1999
| 1998–1999
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 638
|-
! Season 17
| September, 1999
| May, 2000
| 1999–2000
! style="text-align:center" | #3
! style="text-align:center" | 635
|-
! Season 18
| September, 2000
| May, 2001
| 2000–2001
! style="text-align:center" | #2
! style="text-align:center" | 589
|}
- The series final episode attracted 591,000 viewers on Sunday May 6, 2001. At its height Glenroe achieved nearly one million viewers, during the 1990s it often had 700,000 viewers.
Characters
{| border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="1" style="border:1px solid #aaa"|- align=center
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
!height="150px" bgcolor="#F9F9F9" |
|-
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | A screenshot of Miley (left) and Dinny (right) in 1983
!width="150px" colspan="1" bgcolor="#CCCCCC" | Mary McDermott-Moran in 1983
|}
Main characters
{| class="wikitable"|- bgcolor="#CCCCCC"
|Character || Actor || Character Duration
|-
|Dinny Byrne || Joe Lynch || 1983–2000
|-
|Miley Byrne || Mick Lally
Mick Lally
Michael 'Mick' Lally was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s...
|| 1983–2001
|-
|Biddy Byrne || Mary McEvoy
Mary McEvoy
Mary McEvoy is an Irish actress. She is recognised by television viewers for having played the role of Biddy Byrne in Glenroe from 1983-2000...
|| 1983–2000
|-
|Dick Moran || Emmet Bergin || 1983–2001
|-
|Mary McDermott-Moran || Geraldine Plunkett || 1983–2001
|-
|Stephen Brennan || Robert Carrickford ||
|-
|Father Tim Devereux || Donall Farmer ||
|-
|Teasy McDaid || Maureen Toal ||
|-
|George Manning || Alan Stanford
Alan Stanford
Alan Stanford is a well known Irish-based actor and director.-Personal life:Stanford has lived in Ireland since 1969. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London....
||
|-
|Michelle Haughey || Isobel Mahon ||
|-
|Blackie Connors || Liam Heffernan ||
|-
|Sergeant Roche || Paul Bennett
Paul Bennett
Paul Bennett may refer to:*Paul Bennett , author and typographer*Paul Bennett , Canadian football player*Paul Bennett , English soccer player...
||
|-
|Fidelma Kelly || Eunice MacMenamin ||
|-
|Joseph Timlin || John-Paul McGarry ||
|-
|Aileen Synnot || Laura Howard
Laura Howard
Laura Howard is an English actress. She is probably best known for her role as Cully Barnaby in the long-running British crime-mystery drama Midsomer Murders....
||
|-
|Nuala Brennan née Maher || Carmel Callan ||
|-
|Kevin Haughey|| Liam Carney ||
|-
|Sylvie Dolan || David Kelly
David Kelly (actor)
David Kelly is an Irish actor, who has been in regular film and television work since the 1950s.-Acting career:Playing everything from Beckett to Shakespeare, he has appeared in Theatre, TV and film constantly since 1959...
||
|-
|Uncle Peter || Cyril Cusack
Cyril Cusack
Cyril James Cusack was an Irish actor, who appeared in more than 90 films.-Early life:Cusack was born in Durban, Natal, South Africa, the son of Alice Violet , an actress, and James Walter Cusack, a sergeant in the Natal mounted police. His parents separated when he was young and his mother took...
||
|-
|Dr. David Hanlon || Mario Rosenstock
Mario Rosenstock
Mario Rosenstock born 31 August 1971, is an Irish actor, comedian, impressionist and musician who is best known for his parody music singles and his role in the Gift Grub comedy series on Irish radio station Today FM....
||
|-
|Terry Kileen || Kate Thompson
Kate Thompson (romantic novelist)
Kate Thompson is an Northern Irish actress and romantic novelist who also writes as Pixie Pirelli . She was born in Belfast and studied English and French at Trinity College, Dublin. She spent many years as an actress in theatre and television, most notably in the Irish drama serial Glenroe...
||
|-
|Rev. George Black || Enda Oates
Enda Oates
Enda Oates , occasionally credited as Enda Oats, is an Irish stage, film, and television actor. He has received attention for his stagework, but is best known to Irish television audiences as the Reverend George Black in the long running series Glenroe for RTE, and as Barreller Casey in the sitcom...
||
|-
|Dan Reilly || Joe McKinney
Joe McKinney
Joe McKinney is an Irish stage, screen/television actor and voice-over artist.Dublin-born McKinney trained and worked as a hairdresser for four years, before joining fringe theatre...
|| 1998–2001
|-
|Catherine Daly || Louise Kerr ||
|-
|Conor Sheehy || Tim Murphy
Tim Murphy
Timothy John Murphy is a former politician and was the chief of staff of the Canadian Prime Minister's Office under Paul Martin's government.-Background:...
||
|-
|Fiona March Black || Lucy Vigne-Welch ||
|-
| Bernadette Timlin || Barbara Griffin ||
|}
Broadcasting details
The show was also successful outside Ireland, although Glenroe was not networked, 13 of the 14 ITV regions had transmitted the series in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. After this point listings (which have been sourced from The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
Digital Archive) are no longer available.
- In December 1995, as part of a soap opera-themed weekend, Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
broadcast an episode of Glenroe.
- The entire series also aired on SBS One in AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and it also aired on the now defunct Irish American Channel in the United States of America.
- During the late 1990s Glenroe was also shown on the Tara TelevisionTara TelevisionTara Television was an Irish cable and satellite channel aimed primarily at the Irish Diaspora living in Britain, it was set up in 1996 and began broadcasting a year later before being finally wound up in April 2002 by the High Court....
network in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
via cable and SkyDigital from 1997 to the closure of the station in 2002. Classic episodes were shown in the daytime and repeated in the early evenings on weekdays, and current episodes were simulcast with RTÉ on Sunday evenings during each season. Tara had reached the 1992/93 season of Glenroe at the time of the station's closure.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|rowspan="2" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
ITV Region
||colspan="4" bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|Programme Schedule Pattern
|-
|bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
Start Date
||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|Days Screened||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|
End Date||bgcolor="#f2f2f2"|Replaced With
|-
| Anglia Television
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Border Television
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984. Wednesdays 12.30 from September 1985 to 19 March 1986.
| 19 March 1986
| ???
|-
| Central
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
|-
| Channel Television
| as TSW
| as TSW
| ???
| ???
|-
| Grampian Television
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984
| 22 August 1984
| ???
|--
| Granada Television
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
|-
| HTV Wales
and HTV West
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Scottish Television
(STV)
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| 21 August 1984
| ???
|-
| Television South
(TVS)
| Thursday 7 June 1984
| Thursdays 14.00 from Thursday 7 June 1984. Fridays 15.30 from September 1985.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Television South West
(TSW)
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Thames Television
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Tyne Tees Television
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Ulster Television (UTV)
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985. UTV then began a re-run of the series from the beginning in a daytime slot in 1989, before moving to 18.30 slot during 1990-92. By the late 1990s, the series was shown on Thursdays 19.30 on a sporadic basis.
| 2001 (had reached 1994 episodes)
| Other regional programmes
|-
| Yorkshire Television
(YTV)
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| ???
| ???
|}
|-
| Anglia Television
Anglia Television
Anglia Television is the ITV franchise holder for the East Anglia franchise region. Although Anglia Television takes its name from East Anglia, its transmission coverage extends beyond the generally accepted boundaries of that region. The station is based at Anglia House in Norwich, with regional...
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984.
| ???
| ???
|-
| Border Television
Border Television
Border Television is the ITV franchise holder for the Border region, spanning the England/Scotland border and covering Dumfries & Galloway region, a small part of the south-west area of Ayrshire, the Scottish Borders, parts of north and west Northumberland and the majority of Cumbria...
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984. Wednesdays 12.30 from September 1985 to 19 March 1986.
| 19 March 1986
| ???
|-
| Central
Central Independent Television
Central Independent Television, more commonly known as Central is the Independent Television contractor for the Midlands, created following the restructuring of ATV and commencing broadcast on 1 January 1982. The station is owned and operated by ITV plc, under the licensee of ITV Broadcasting...
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
| Never transmitted
|-
| Channel Television
Channel Television
Channel Television is a British television station which has served as an Independent Television contractor to the Channel Islands since 1962. It is based in Jersey...
| as TSW
| as TSW
| ???
| ???
|-
| Grampian Television
Grampian Television
Grampian Television is the ITV franchisee for the North and North East of Scotland. Its coverage area includes the Scottish Highlands , Inverness, Aberdeen, Dundee and parts of north Fife...
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984
| 22 August 1984
| ???
|--
| Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
|-
| HTV Wales
HTV
HTV, now legally known as ITV Wales & West, is the ITV contractor for Wales and the West of England, which operated from studios in Cardiff and Bristol. The company provided commercial television for the dual-region 'Wales and West' franchise, which it won from TWW in 1968...
and HTV West
HTV
HTV, now legally known as ITV Wales & West, is the ITV contractor for Wales and the West of England, which operated from studios in Cardiff and Bristol. The company provided commercial television for the dual-region 'Wales and West' franchise, which it won from TWW in 1968...
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| ???
| ???
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| Scottish Television
Scottish Television
Scottish Television is Scotland's largest ITV franchisee, and has held the ITV franchise for Central Scotland since 31 August 1957. It is the second oldest ITV franchisee still active...
(STV)
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| 21 August 1984
| ???
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| Television South
Television South
Television South was the ITV franchise holder in the south and south east of England between 1 January 1982 and 31 December 1992. The company operated under various names, initially as Television South plc and then following reorganisation in 1989 as TVS Entertainment plc, with its UK...
(TVS)
| Thursday 7 June 1984
| Thursdays 14.00 from Thursday 7 June 1984. Fridays 15.30 from September 1985.
| ???
| ???
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| Television South West
Television South West
Television South West was the ITV franchise holder for the South West England region from 1 January 1982 until 31 December 1992, broadcasting from the former Westward Television studios in Plymouth, Devon.-Origins and Launch:...
(TSW)
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
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| Thames Television
Thames Television
Thames Television was a licensee of the British ITV television network, covering London and parts of the surrounding counties on weekdays from 30 July 1968 until 31 December 1992....
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984.
| ???
| ???
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| Tyne Tees Television
Tyne Tees Television
Tyne Tees Television is the ITV television franchise for North East England and parts of North Yorkshire. As of 2009, it forms part of a non-franchise ITV Tyne Tees & Border region, shared with the ITV Border region...
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985.
| ???
| ???
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| Ulster Television (UTV)
| Tuesday 3 July 1984 13.30
| Tuesdays and Wednesdays 13.30 from Tuesday 3 July 1984. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday 12.30 from Tuesday 9 July 1985. UTV then began a re-run of the series from the beginning in a daytime slot in 1989, before moving to 18.30 slot during 1990-92. By the late 1990s, the series was shown on Thursdays 19.30 on a sporadic basis.
| 2001 (had reached 1994 episodes)
| Other regional programmes
|-
| Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television
Yorkshire Television, now officially known as ITV Yorkshire and sometimes unofficially abbreviated to YTV, is a British television broadcaster and the contractor for the Yorkshire franchise area on the ITV network...
(YTV)
| Monday 4 June 1984 15.30
| Mondays and Tuesdays 15.30 from Monday 4 June 1984.
| ???
| ???
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