A Law Unto Themselves - Love/Hate Special

We have confirmation. Even if the contrary is spray-painted on bus shelters across the country, I can personally confirm that Elmo is most definitely not a rat. Or at least, the actor who portrays him isn’t.

As the fifth series of Love/Hate gathers momentum, I’ve tried one of the oldest journalistic tricks in the book. Having greeted Laurence Kinlan with the deceptive warmth of an old mafia buddy, I stun him by immediately aiming for the jugular. “So go on," I taunt, hard as any Nidge. "Elmo dies, doesn’t he?" The sweat is running down my forehead. I'm shouting by now. "How? Who kills him?" And I'm not stopping for anybody. I have a gun to his head at this stage. And I'm roaring. "C’mon! Fucking tell me!”
The 31-year-old Liberties actor is having none of it. He biffs me in the nose and quickly wrestles me to the ground. And sits on me. A professional with a contract, he’s determined to keep schtum, despite my clearly superlative interrogational skills.
“That’s the one question I can’t answer!” he says, with a sardonic I-get-this-a-lot laugh. “We’ve been well trained now as to what we can and can’t say. So will you just shut the fuck up and ask me something I can answer for a fucking change you little twerp, or I'll turn you into a hamburger and have you for dinner.”
Okay, I made that bit up, but you get the picture. He may get bumped off. Then again he may not. And to find out, you're going to have to watch, just like nearly a million other people do every Sunday evening.
Indeed, the only thing we can predict about Series Five – which is about to hit the halfway mark as you read this – is that just about anyone can be whisked off this mortal coil by writer Stuart Carolan. We’ve seen the Gillens and Sheehans make dramatic ‘Episode Six’ exits in the past, and while we were left dangling in that regard last time out – sorry, hapless dentist Andrew, but you were always going to end up being ironically murdered by gummy psychopath Fran – it was with the promise that the slower pace was the point all along. We should, Carolan has said, view Series Four and Five as a whole, with an arc that will make sense if you stick around. We’re sticking around with a vengeance – Love/Hate is the kind of runaway hit that gains momentum even as it sheds A-list names.
Tom Vaughan-Lawlor’s conflicted, darkly charismatic Nidge now has King status and his screams at the finale of Series Four were heard by an audience of over one million, the show’s highest ratings yet. Almoast as many viewers tuned in for the opening of the new series.
“The whole country seems glued to it,” says Kinlan. “It’s nice that the expectation was so high: it just adds to the tension. People ask all the time ‘what happens next?’ A little part of them wants to know, before other people – but they really don’t want to know. it's much better to watch the action unfold.”
As it happens, when you’re portraying a Dublin criminal on the small screen, inadvertent spoilers are probably the least of your concerns.
“You get certain people coming up and saying ‘Do you know who I am?’” he confesses with a mimic growl. “'You’re basically playing what I live’. Great! But they usually just have loads of questions about the show... I haven’t had any scary moments. Yet.”
In what has been a distinguished career on stage and screen, Kinlan admits his only project that came close to matching the impact of Love/Hate’s was Ned Kelly, the 2003 film he starred in alongside Heath Ledger.
“I’m in lots of movies and I get recognised the odd time, but this is a completely different level," he reflects. "I don’t even know how to put it in context. Despite the nature of the characters we’re playing, people seem to warm to them. I think it's because they're so proud of Ireland creating something like this. Everyone wants a piece of you: you’re eating in a restaurant and there’s people over to you when you’re with your family. That’s very odd, but at the same time they’re really lovely, so you can’t complain.”

Another key player in Love/Hate is Aoibhínn McGinnity. The Monaghan actor plays Nidge’s wife Trish, an equal force of nature in a stormy, if strangely loving relationship.
“Some of our Assistant Directors have been in this business for years," she says. "They’ve seen things like Braveheart being filmed here – and even they’re in shock over the reaction! I was away once in Sweden for one of the final episodes. When I got back, the papers and Twitter had gone bananas. I just remember thinking ‘holy shit’.
“Sometimes it gets crazy on set. It’s so surreal. As soon as the schools were closed, they were telling us we had to be prepared: the kids would find out where we were filming and they’d come down. So we needed security there, telling us ‘okay, quick go that way, go around that corner’! You need to go and do your job – you’re on set and you’re working. But you have to be considerate as well: they’re fans of the show. They’re the reason it’s successful.”
I ask the 28-year-old – who can’t seem to leave the house these days without picking up a style award or being linked with lead singers in Irish bands – if she had any inkling of how well the show was going to do when she was auditioning.
“Ha, everyone wants to say that now: ‘I had a gut feeling’!”
We’ll take her word for it, though...
“It was more that it was one of my first auditions. I’d met the director David Caffrey in an audition for Raw. There was a bit of a buzz about it. I remember being in my agent’s office and him pointing to a picture of Robbie Sheehan on the wall and saying: ‘He’s cast and you might be getting seen for this’. There was a bit of an ‘Oh, this is something’ feeling. I was fresh out of college, not knowing if I would just end up a waitress. At college they say a lot of people don’t actually work in this industry, so you have to be prepared for anything.”
Regardless of either ratings or critical acclaim – which stretched to UK titles like The Guardian when Love/Hate began running on Channel 5 – McGinnity is adamant that even if it had flopped she'd remember it as one of the happiest periods of her life.
“It would still have a special place in my heart because it was my second ever job and it was with this bunch of people that were my age. For a lot of us, it was our first successful job. You make work friends and you make real friends – and I made real friends on this job. Every single element – from the trainee make-up heads to the casting director and director, to the writer – it’s like they’ve also auditioned to be good craic! There’s a real family buzz on Love/Hate.”

The family aspect of Love/Hate took on a different meaning entirely for Laurence Kinlan early this year. His wife was heavily pregnant and guess what? The baby decided to arrive at a rather inopportune moment.
“Ollie was due on Paddy’s Day and he was born the day after, which turned out to be our first day on set! The first week is the ensemble stuff where everyone is in together doing pub scenes or whatever, so there was no chance of getting it off. I missed the birth and I was there all through the night. At lunchtime they'd bring me straight to the Rotunda to see the baby. It was a little bit mad. We were all so happy to be back on set because we hadn’t seen one another for a long time. My head was all over the place. We were waiting for news, and when it arrived they announced it on set and I was fighting the tears. But it wasn’t the place to be crying in, The Towers Pub in Ballymun! So it was: ‘Keep it together, keep it together!’”
For her part, McGinnity admits that she gets nervous watching Love/Hate.
“Often, I’m seeing it for the first time on telly as well. It’s not really something you get used to, so it’s quite an event. You always want to be with your friends or your family watching it.”
An evening at home with your parents watching ‘Trish’ on Love/Hate can’t make for comfortable viewing, given the intensity of some of the scenes she’s been involved in.
“They’ve been forced into taking a very lax attitude towards the things they might see me doing," she laughs. "It’s great now, because it’s all happened. They’ve seen things where I’ve been like ‘Oh mother of God!’ – but it’s happened and it’s done now. If you know what I mean!”
One of the show’s strengths is that the female characters are as complex as the men.
“I love that,” McGinnity enthuses. “It’s amazing to be part of something that’s making that sort of mark on Irish television.”
Time and again, Aoibhinn alludes to the chances writer Stuart Carolan takes, whether deeming popular characters surplus to requirements or slowing the pace down to add to the show’s longevity.
“Bravery is needed, and very clever writing. Everybody in drama has ideas of that kind – and then they suppress them, and go with the commercial idea. That’s when things lose their artistic purpose.”
Both Kinlan and McGinnity agree that the early, outraged criticisms that the show was somehow glamourising violence have been effectively silenced.
“No character does well, or lives a great life,” argues Kinlan. “They all suffer in certain ways. Nidge suffers with guilt and lives in fear. That’s not exactly a great life to live. When this kind of crime-based drama is done in America, we say ‘that could happen over there’. With our show, you only have to pick up a newspaper on any given day over the past couple of years to see that this stuff happens here. It’s real. Sometimes that’s hard for people to take, but we’re trying to tell as much truth as we can.”
“It’s very sad actually,” McGinnity says of the ill-informed outrage. “If somebody thinks that’s glamorous, it’s their idea of glamour that’s the problem! You’ll actually see a lot of heartbreak in Love/Hate if you look properly. Sure, there are times where there’s very, very dark humour. But you need that. That’s very true to Irish life. Any kind of funeral situation, for example, there can be that very, very dark humour there – people telling bittersweet stories. That’s how people cope with grim reality.” 

Close to one million people tuned into the opening instalment of Series Five – an astonishing 56% market share, up from the 53% that the Series Four premiere garnered. What they witnessed was Carolan making good on his promise to quicken the pace – and up the body count. So - spoiler alert if you haven't seen it - poor ol’ Lizzie, the Darren killer played by Caoilfhionn Dunne, went out with a bang through the brain, executed in remarkably nonchalant, coincidental fashion on Nidge’s orders as he attempted to reassert his authority.
Elsewhere, there are a couple of faces, returning and new, getting ready to square up to Nidge. Pipe-bomb maker Patrick seems more intent than ever on seeing to it that Nidge bites the dust, in spite of our King’s offer of peace. That olive branch was extended at the behest of Terence, a suave (read: creepy) crook based in Spain, who is dead set on Nidge repaying the cash that went west in the drug bust at the end of Series Four.
He sends his nephew Pauley to Dublin to keep an eye on our favourite chrome dome divil. Pauley, however, has his eye on Siobhán, who in turn wants revenge for her comatose Tommy – and seems to be enjoying the informant role just a little bit too much. That's plenty to digest of a Sunday. Strange then, that actor Johnny Ward, who plays newcomer Pauley, had his mind on The Simpsons...
“We were going to have this huge party, with my girlfriend, my friends and my family, to watch the first episode I was in,” he recalls. “And I just kept thinking about the Itchy & Scratchy episode, with Homer doing the voice of Poochie! It’s this big, horrible disaster because he’s crap. So I thought, ‘I’m not going to do it, just in case I come across as absolutely woeful’! In the end, we kept it small. Myself, my sister and my girlfriend watched it. My heart was beating like 90. I’m so relieved the first episode is done. I was absolutely bricking it!”
Ironically, the 27-year-old actor had spent a long time knocking on the door before he was allowed in.
“I’d actually auditioned for the first season of Love/Hate and got down to the final two for a major, major part in it,” he reveals. “When it didn’t happen, I’m not going to lie, there was a bit of sour grapes – especially when, with Season Two, the show became huge.”
Another opportunity presented itself a year later, but it was the same frustrating story.
“I got down to the last two for another role. The same thing happened again. I just thought: ‘this isn’t going my way’.
“It’s impossible to live in Ireland without hearing about it. Even if you don’t watch Love/Hate, you’re in traffic and you see it on the front page of the Herald. Then it’s on the radio. There’s no getting away from it! Then people were saying to me, ‘Would you not go for Love/Hate?’. They’d no idea!”
Unlike the plotline of Love/Hate, a happy ending was in sight.
“I was doing a series called The Centre on RTÉ last year, and after that I took a bit of a break and went over to my girlfriend’s house in London. I got a phone call from my agent saying that [director] David Caffrey wanted to do an audition with me: there was a new part up for grabs, called ‘Pauley’.”
No sooner had Pauley arrived on our screens than swooning tweets were flying around the island, declaring him to be the heir apparent in the heartthrob stakes to Robert Sheehan and Killian Scott whose character, Tommy, is out of action. How does he feel about his growing pin-up status?
“I’m not really thinking about that," he lies. "Robert Sheehan and Killian Scott are the two heartthrobs of the show and I think they’ll remain that. You know how it is with Love/Hate: you can love some character one week and then next week people might hate me for some of the things I’m going to get up to. The feedback to my character has been about 85% positive – obviously I’m going to get negative comments as well, when they realise they know me from adverts. ‘There’s that eejit from off the Lyons Tea ad’: that's to be expected!”
This role seems a surefire way to make people forget all about commercials for aromatic beverages.
“He is an intimidating character, but it’s not really him that’s intimidating, it’s just the fact of who his uncle is. What status and presence his uncle has – no one’s going to mess around with him. There’s not many characters that mess with Nidge’s head without getting a bullet instantly.”

One man who has dodged the bullets and come back stronger is Patrick, the traveller, who is adept at improvising explosive devices. In the action-packed opening episode, actor John Connors delivered the killer line of the week. Responding to a conciliatory offer of ten grand, and taking umbrage at Nidge’s apparent suggestion that his child has nits, he intones: “I don’t want your money, take it back and use it to buy a headstone.”
“It’s been shouted at me all week!” Connor laughs. “It’s nice to see a different side to Patrick. We saw the peaceful, obedient side last year, trying everything he could to reassure Nidge: ‘Everything’s going to be okay, I’m going to say nothing'. Then he went about his business, went with his family away on the boat. Now he’s refusing to bow down to Nidge. He’s coming back and doing his thing. His pride is still intact. His honour.”
Connors didn’t experience Ward’s anxiety watching the opening episode – “I was watching it by myself and a friend knocked in, so we watched it together. Didn’t make a big deal out of it” – but he doesn't enjoy watching his own scenes.
“I can’t really look at myself and believe in myself," he says. "The rest of the stuff is great; I love watching other actors work. Tom Vaughan-Lawlor is a world class actor. Every actor in it is a great actor, but Tom just elevates any scene he's in. And he brings you up to that level. Things like that are a joy. The recurring thing in the episode with the nits. And you know it’s going to go somewhere. You see what happens – it becomes the difference between life and death. The difference between everything being all rosy... and now, the chaos.”
His colleague Johnny Ward can confirm that chaos will reign from here on.
“Craig, you have no idea! Some of the stuff that’s in Season Five, obviously I can’t say too much but... it’s absolutely outrageous. Breaking every rule in the book. I know with Season Four, there were a few complaints. I thought it was great, but they did it from the good guy point of view. That was a bit difficult, because everybody fell in love with Tom Vaughan-Lawlor’s Nidge and his gang. It was a brave choice to introduce a good guy character and bring in the police. But I think this one is going to be the best yet.”
Connors concurs.
“This season, Stuart and Dave tried to go bigger and better again on the same budget, on the same crew. To do that, everybody had to be on top form. Everybody believed in the script. Everybody looked at it and said that it’s the best yet. Everybody – crew and cast – had that desire – to make it the best yet.”
That team spirit is a corner-stone of the show’s success. It instantly struck Ward on his first day, when he felt like “the new boy in school”.
“I don’t know any of these people. They’re obviously all going to know each other and they all have nothing but respect, success and diehard fans in England and other places. Even Ed Sheeran was talking last week about how it was one of his favourite shows. So there was a certain amount of pressure going in.
"I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was welcomed first by Laurence Kinlan who plays Elmo. He came over, shook my hand and said: ‘Welcome to the Love/Hate family, you’re going to have a great time’. Tom came over. Obviously I was as surprised as everyone else when I heard him speaking. I didn’t have a lot of scenes with Peter Coonan, but he’s the type of person that would knock into your room and go, ‘How’s things man, do you want to go over a few lines?’ There’s that kind of atmosphere. Everyone’s there for each other; it’s a lovely vibe.
“I was devastated when the whole thing finished. It’s three months, very intense, and it becomes a bubble. It’s like being in Big Brother! I’ve worked before on productions and you get so many idiots with airs and graces. They’ve probably been on television before – they’ve got a lucky break and they’ve completely changed. It’s that saying: ‘Be careful how you treat people on the way up, you’ll meet them again on the way back down’. There’s none of that nonsense in Love/Hate.”

The way down seems an alien concept for everyone involved Love/Hate. Ward is an episode deep and already overwhelmed by the public response. Connors, meanwhile, is still getting to grips with the public approaches.
“I’ve had fellas, even last season, coming up to me in nightclubs and going, ‘Do you think you’re a gangster?’” Connors recalls. “I’d be just: ‘No, I’m an actor'. I just defuse the situation. The other thing you get is: ‘What’s up buddy, any pipe bombs?’! You just go along with it for the craic. ‘Yeah, I’ve one in the car, do you want it?’ But you’re having the buzz, you’ve got to go with the flow. You have to be a little bit careful of where you’re going and who you’re speaking to. Generally though, people just want to have the craic or buzz off you...”
There is plenty of conversation to be had when over half the TV-watching country are glued to your show.
“I did a few films before Love/Hate and they were good films that were successful. But the thing with low-budget Irish films is that they don’t really get seen by an Irish audience. Then you go on to Love/Hate and a million people are watching you. It’s a huge difference. Immediately you see it. You’re walking down the street and everyone’s coming up to you. It’s a big thing career-wise.
“I can’t remember the last time I went to a cinema in Ireland to see an Irish film, and a bum was on every seat. There was a film I did called Savages a few years ago and there were six people in the cinema. And two of them were actors in it!”
There's real kudos for RTÉ in the success of the series.
“There has never been anything like it on Irish television," John continues. " You couldn’t say ‘fuck’ on Irish TV a few years ago. Now you look at Twitter accounts and you’ve teenagers saying how awkward it was watching that sex scene with Nidge and his wife around their parents. You never saw that! Finally, we’re not talking about American TV shows or British TV shows: instead, it's something that’s been made on our doorstep. And you know what? It’s about time! Love/Hate has broken the mould.”
"Is Love/Hate Ireland's answer to The Wire?" ran a Guardian headline over a Summer 2013 article that essentially decided, yes, indeed it is. The first series had just arrived on British shores courtesy of Channel 5, and despite some confused viewers asking for subtitles, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Plenty of other countries are catching Love/Hate fever too.
"Drama is a very difficult sell, no matter where it comes from," says Edel Edwards, Head of Sales at RTÉ Global. "It's such a competitive market. But when I watched the first four episodes back-to-back, I thought, 'Oh my God, we have something that's going to travel well.'" And so it's proved to be with the show airing in New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Israel and Brazil, to name just five countries that Nidge & Co. have been exported to.
"Love/Hate is really popular in Australia," Edwards resumes. "The most recent deal was with TV2 in Norway. We still have Sweden, Finland and Denmark to go..."
As for the much-rumoured international remake, she admits that, "There's definitely been discussion, but we're not at the stage where it's 100% happening. If and when that does happen, it will most certainly be big news."

Series 5 of Love/Hate airs at 9.30pm, Sunday nights, on RTÉ One.