{"id":414456,"date":"2026-04-24T02:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414456\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T02:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T02:08:08","slug":"wry-and-relentless-this-series-has-matured-into-an-earnestly-funny-dramedy-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/414456\/","title":{"rendered":"Wry and relentless, this series has matured into an earnestly funny dramedy \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nancy Harris<\/a>\u2019s The Dry (RT\u00c9 One, 10.15pm) had an inauspicious beginning in 2022 as a comedy about a family of Irish alcoholics made for Britain\u2019s Britbox streaming service. So far, so pandering. However, as the series returns for a third and final season, it has outgrown its desire to cater to the British gaze and has found its groove as an earnestly funny dramedy about middle-class Dubliners stumbling through life in a haze of dysfunction.<\/p>\n

The excellent R\u00f3is\u00edn Gallagher<\/a> is back as Siobh\u00e1n, an arts lecturer who has overcome a ruinous relationship with wine and is trying to conquer her equally destructive connection with horrific ex, Jack (Moe Dunford<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Awkwardly, he has been parachuted into her NCAD-esque college, where he is smugly lecturing on the evils of toxic masculinity to his mesmerised students. Dunford is brilliantly smug and slithery as the despicable Jack, one of those fake bohos who always seem to come out on top in Ireland, no matter that their villainy is plain to see.<\/p>\n

Siobh\u00e1n\u2019s a mess \u2013 but so too are her parents, Bernie (Pom Boyd) and Tom (Ciar\u00e1n Hinds<\/a>), who have separated following Tom\u2019s affair with a neighbour. Tom (Hinds is great as a dozy Irish dad) has embarked on a new career running a coffee stall. Bernie, meanwhile, has to cope with the arrival in her life of a figure from the past.<\/p>\n

This comes as an unnecessary complication for the kids. Siobh\u00e1n is stuck working with her ex. Her sister Caroline (Siobh\u00e1n Cullen<\/a>) has meanwhile cut off the father of her newborn baby (a smug banker she met on Tinder) and become engaged to boring ex Rory (Eoin Duffy), who arrives with a disapproving mother as standard. <\/p>\n

Harris\u2019s script is agreeably wry and impressively relentless. If one joke doesn\u2019t land, never mind, because here comes another. The Dry also accurately captures the travails of a certain cohort of well-to-do Dubliners who don\u2019t have to worry about property prices but have found lots of other things to be unhappy about.<\/p>\n

Still, each 30-minute episode clips by \u2013 helped along by some genuinely compelling twists. The new addition to the cast is Rick Donald, as Australian Daryl, an out-of-towner who puts it to Siobh\u00e1n that her excessive drinking wasn\u2019t an indication of alcoholism but a response to the trauma she felt over her brother\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018It\u2019s a stereotype that Ireland is full of drinkers. It\u2019s a problem all over the world\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

That death and other tragedies and setbacks are handled sensitively, and Gallagher is great as a millennial on the brink of getting it together but who can\u2019t quite leave her old, shambolic self behind. Having begun as a clich\u00e9d comedy about posh, drunken Dubs, The Dry has matured into something both funnier and more introspective \u2013 and it\u2019s great fun to sit down and watch it pour another (non-alcoholic) glass of acutely observed social comedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nancy Harris\u2019s The Dry (RT\u00c9 One, 10.15pm) had an inauspicious beginning in 2022 as a comedy about a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[117393,615,93,61,60,178735,128277,6085,49957,282],"class_list":{"0":"post-414456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-ciaran-hinds","9":"tag-dublin","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-nancy-harris","14":"tag-roisin-gallagher","15":"tag-rte","16":"tag-siobhan-cullen","17":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}