LIKE EVERY HOUSE in Ireland in the 90’s, there were at least a couple of VHS recordings of D’Unbelievables lurking around in old cabinets, ready to be ‘thrown on for a few minutes’ any time there was deemed to be ‘nothing on the telly’. The intention would be to sit down, watch a sketch or two and then carry on with whatever needed doing around the place, while the comforting soundscape continued in the background. But of course, that never happened.
One by one, family members were lured in, maybe by shouts of ‘I won’t says I, I’m fine’ or ‘D’at’s right’, until eventually, everyone was gathered on the sofa, watching the madness on display in its entirety until the end. That was the beauty of the D’Unbelievables. That ability to draw you in.
To make you laugh from that place in your belly that you sometimes forget is there. From the simplest of set ups; a child buying sweets, a hurling coach giving a pep talk, coughing and conversation at the back of the church; the precision of the characterisations and the celebration of rural culture that appealed to young and old, was something we had never seen before. In our house we had grown up on a diet of Dick Emery, Mr Bean, Fawlty Towers and now here were two of our own.
The power of it cannot be underestimated. Jon Kenny and Pat Shortt found new ways for us to laugh at ourselves. The way they broke the fourth wall and transformed audience members into fully fledged characters integral to the sketch, f.