Oscar Bravo

If you’ve been watching early evening television, you might have noticed an unusual Irish produced drama. It airs at 6.30pm on RTÉ 2. I choose the word unusual because The Importance Of Being Whatever is certainly that. Written by Iseult Golden and David Horan and directed by brothers Rob and Ronan Burke, Whatever is a series of 27 three-minute episodes featuring a young cast and some of Ireland’s best new music.

Whatever is a romance, loosely based on Oscar Wilde’s most famous play, The Importance of Being Ernest. Tobi Okocha is a Leaving Cert student. His mother is struggling to make ends meet, and between his studies and his part-time job working for his estranged father, Tobi doesn’t have much time for fun. When he meets Emma, Tobi follows her to drama class. To impress her, Tobi joins the cast who are rehearsing Oscar Wilde’s play. Inspired, he invents an alter ego, ‘Harry’, who is the opposite of the responsible Tobi. Between school, work and his double-life, Tobi has a difficult balancing act especially as Emma is more than a little drawn to the ultra-cool Harry.
The three-minute format presents a challenge to create engaging characters and a storyline, says Rob.
“You need to step things up very fast. You have to find a way to hook the audience in to keep them coming back.”
“You have to start the story almost immediately,” continues Ronan. “You don’t have the luxury of time to set the tone. The first couple of episodes are very pacy as you’re trying to convey a lot of information quickly and introduce the plot.”
“One thing that really helped was having a narrator orientate the audience. She explains what’s going on and recaps a little bit,” says Rob.
The story is told from the point of view of a blogger, Cocobeans. In some ways Cocobeans acts as a one-woman Greek chorus for the internet age, filmed in shadows and commenting on the action and characters. Who exactly is she?
“She’s a mysterious character, but her identity will be revealed,” says Rob, who is not giving anything away.
If you’ve missed any of the three-minute episodes, which air on RTÉ 2 at 6.30pm on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, they’re repeated back-to-back at 11.30am on Saturday mornings. In addition, all the episodes have been linked to create a longer feature, which will be shown over Christmas.
“We had to change things around a little bit,” says Rob. “We had to reorder some scenes. There’s not as much of the blogging and recapping and there are a couple of extra scenes as well.”
The star of the show is Tobi who’s played by young actor Kwaku Fortune. Tobi and Kwaku have much in common. Like Tobi, Kwaku has an Irish father and African mother, and although he hopes to continue acting, like the sensible Tobi, Kwaku is studying marketing as well.
“I’d love to continue acting and I hope to next year,” says Kwaku, “But even so, I’d want to have the marketing as well.”
Tobi adopts the alter ego of Harry. But of course, trying on different personas is part of the joy of acting.
“The great thing about it,: Kwaku says, “is that you can be someone else and express yourself in different ways.”
However, unlike Tobi, Kwaku is 20.
“I know I look very young!” he laughs. “I always thought that was a bad thing, but if you can play someone younger, why not?”
Even so, it’s not that long ago since Kwaku had to sit the dreaded Leaving Cert.
“I think the show is relevant to teenage life in Ireland. I was like that when I was doing my Leaving Cert. I had a part-time job and it can be stressful. I put myself under pressure. My mum and dad were grand, but most of my friends were under a lot of pressure from their parents. One of my friends wasn’t allowed out at all.”
One of the most interesting features of Whatever is that it is also a showcase of Irish music – the 27 episodes feature songs from 39 different Irish acts including Ham Sandwich, Tarantella Fall, Readers Wives, Yeh Deadlies, Cashier No. 9 and Niall Colfer. Whittling the music down to 39 bands was no easy task, notes Rob.
“The response was overwhelming. Some people we really wanted to use didn’t get used in the end because of working with the show it depends how well it fits with the material.”
“We really wanted the music in the show to reflect the vibrant Irish scene,” says Ronan.
And you know what? It does just that...

The Importance Of Being Whatever airs on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays on RTÉ 2 at 6.30pm.