John Connors has said the detective he plays in RTÉ's new drama The Galway Bay Murders is the most significant part he has taken on, according to RTE.ie. The series, which follows a murder inquiry on a Conamara bog, starts on RTÉ One on Sunday night. It marks the television debut of writer-creator Eithne Verling, who grew up in An Cheathrú Rua.
In the drama, the discovery of a young woman's body brings together a visiting NYPD lieutenant, Nora Savage, played by Star Trek: Voyager's Kate Mulgrew, and Connors' Detective Eddie McDonagh. The pair are assigned to work the case together and build what RTE.ie describes as a formidable partnership across a mystery full of turns. The story also takes in climate activism, Traveller culture and bereavement.
Why it matters
The launch puts a new Irish crime drama on the national broadcaster's Sunday schedule with an established international name in Mulgrew opposite one of Ireland's best-known screen actors. For Connors, the Love/Hate star, it is a departure in emphasis: he told RTE.ie that Eddie has been the most enjoyable character he has played and also the most important one.
The series also carries weight for how it handles Traveller life. Connors said the writing avoids the flat, one-sided depictions he has seen elsewhere and instead presents people as complicated and in between. He credited Verling, who has spent years working with Travellers through her role at Galway City Museum, with bringing that understanding to the script.
A role he nearly turned down
Connors was involved in the series as an adviser and was in the writers' room with Verling, and by his own account he never pictured himself as Eddie at that stage. It was his wife, the actor Danielle Magennis, who read the material and asked him why he was not going after the part. He told RTE.ie that without her he would not have the role at all.
He described his own initial reluctance in blunt terms, saying pride had got in the way and that he felt the makers should already know what he could do. Magennis pressed him to insist on auditioning. Connors laughed as he recalled telling her he was too good to audition.
Time was against him. He said he was given three days but effectively had one, because he was travelling between Dublin and Belfast, recording seven podcasts over two days and learning lines for another project he was still filming. On the day itself he told his wife he was not going to do it, doubting he could manage with so little preparation. She took his phone from him, told him to stop feeling sorry for himself and spent the day running lines back and forth with him in the sitting room.
When it came to recording, he said he planned to film a single take and told her so, by his own telling in the voice of a child. She pushed him to do a second, which he agreed was good, and then a third, which he resisted until she offered dinner and cocktails as an incentive. He said he had wanted to prove to her that he had it in him.
Shared history and two communities
Connors said what draws him to Eddie is a shared experience of loss. The character's father died by suicide, as did Connors' own, and both men have lost their mothers; Connors said his mother died of cancer and that Eddie's likely died of the same illness, though he noted the series has not stated the cause. He added that the two men have dealt with that grief in opposite ways. Eddie is withdrawn, deliberate and watchful, someone who likes to hold the reins, while Connors described himself as outgoing, instinctive and inclined to speak before thinking.
He also spoke about accent and identity. In his community, he said, adopting another accent and hiding who you are can mark a person as an outcast, because it looks like shame. Eddie switches between his guard persona and his family self, but Connors said the change is not driven by shame: the character comes alive differently with relatives, through humour and warmth, and carries a different bearing on duty. Connors described the tension of trying to stay faithful to two communities at once and the impossibility of doing so fully, and said the part is endlessly interesting to him as a result.
He praised Verling for building a police procedural with real feeling at its centre. He said her long familiarity with Travellers meant the authenticity was already on the page and that script advisers needed to adjust only small things, a word here or there. He contrasted that with what he called the usual inhuman, black-and-white treatment of Travellers on screen, saying this series works in the grey.
What to watch
Connors told RTE.ie he would be entirely shocked if the show did not get a second series, noting it has already been bought by ITV, and he hopes its success brings more productions to the west of Ireland. He argued the whodunit structure will draw an audience, but that the characters are what hold it together. The first episode airs on RTÉ One on Sunday night.
