Stream It Or Skip It?
We’re always intrigued when an Acorn TV series stars someone that’s very familiar to American TV audiences, so a new series that stars Alicia Silverstone (who is also an EP on the series) definitely got our attention.
IRISH BLOOD: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman stares straight ahead. “You wanna know how I ended up here? Actually, I blame my father.”
The Gist: Fiona Fox (Alicia Silverstone), a Los Angeles divorce attorney, then launches into the story of how her close family was ripped apart on her tenth birthday back in 1993 when her father, Declan Murphy (Jason O’Mara) suddenly left her and her mother Mary (Wendy Crewson). This was after Fiona heard a struggle and saw that Mary had been hit. Since then, she’s been angry about how her “shitwaffle” of a father hit her mom then left them, and her desire to get “revenge” led her to her lucrative career. She is also relationship-averse, as we see when one of her sexual partners wants to be more than just a booty call.
The next day. Fiona’s assistant Tess (Djouliet Amara) hands her a package from Wicklow, Ireland. It’s a key and a picture of a locker with a phone number on the back. When she calls, she gets her father’s accounting firm; in the middle of Fiona leaving a message, a woman picks up and whispers a cryptic message. Despite her mother wanting Fiona to put her father in the past, Fiona decides to fly to Ireland and confront him.
When she goes to his house, what she thinks is a party is actually his wake. As people wonder why this strange American woman came all the way to Ireland to pay her respects, Fiona meets her grandmother Isadora (Dearbhla Molloy), as well as her aunt and uncle, Una (Simone Kirby) and Finn (Stephen Hogan), none of whom know she exists. She decides to keep her identity a secret for the time being.
The only person she tells is Musa (Leonardo Taiwo), the owner of the boxing gym where the locker is located. Apparently, Declan trusted Musa with the information about Fiona, as well as the trouble he had gotten himself into. The locker contains the briefcase Declan had the day he left. Right when she’s about to leave to go back to LA, though, she finds out the truth about her father, not only upending what she thought about him for the last 32 years, but leading her to think he was murdered.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Irish Blood reminds us of a fellow Acorn TV show like Art Detectives.
Our Take: A few things about Irish Blood made us scratch our heads. For one, it seemed that the show was positioning itself as a light mystery with comedic elements. But by the end of the first episode, the tone had switched to something more serious — albeit not super-dark, but definitely not as jokey as the scene where Fiona calls her father a “shitwaffle” in front of a Girl Scout-esque troop.
The second thing that made us go “Hmmmm….”? Why did Fiona, who seems like a sharp, ruthless divorce attorney, never think to look into what happened to her father before this package arrived? And why would Mary not set the record straight about Declan, given how long Fiona had let the notion that he hit Mary and left fester in her brain, shaping her worldview and her career choice. When Fiona tells Mary she remembers that Declan hit her, Mary improbably sounded like this was the first time she was hearing that.
What we’re also not sure about is if Silverstone is up to the task here. Sure, she can be funny and warm, but we don’t quite see her as the hard-ass divorce attorney Fiona is supposed to be. What we figure, though, is that persona is going to fade as she continues to look into how Declan died, working with Musa and a beat cop named Roisin (Ruth Codd) to see just who might have wanted to see Declan dead. She’ll stumble through, finding clues and likely running afoul of some unsavory types. And at some point, she’ll make her father’s family aware of who she actually is. At that point, we can see Silverstone settle into a more consistent persona for Fiona.
Sex and Skin: Fiona sleeps with one of her booty calls, but we only see them in bed after it happens.
Parting Shot: Instead of flying back to LA, we see Fiona in the back of a cab, telling the driver to take her to Wicklow.
Sleeper Star: Wendy Crewson brings more depth to Mary than what is written on the page.
Most Pilot-y Line: When FIona reaches for the package Tess brings in, she knocks over a statue of Lady Justice that’s on her desk. Why it’s there except for an easy visual joke is beyond us.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The only reason why we’re recommending Irish Blood is that we like Silverstone and the rest of the cast. But the first episode has some tone and story problems that definitely give us pause about the rest of the first season.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
