Dublin-based “Irish Blood” producers Deadpan Pictures and Canadian shingle Shaftesbury Films are teaming up again on “The Roaring Banshees,” an adaptation of the hit play by John Morton and Peter McGann that follows an all-female band of Irish rebels who find themselves pursuing a life of crime in 1920s Chicago. The series is among the projects selected to take part in Rome’s MIA Market, which runs Oct. 6 – 10.
“The Roaring Banshees” begins in Ireland, in the aftermath of a failed assassination attempt on a powerful political kingpin by the secret rebel unit known as the Banshees. Forced to escape on an American-bound ship, the members are separated, only to reunite in Chicago in the frigid winter of 1923. Here, they plan to lie low and stay out of trouble until their former wartime commander negotiates their safe passage home — a plan that soon goes awry, making their return to Ireland unlikely.
Struggling to survive in Prohibition Chicago, with the police on their tail and an Irish assassin hot on their tracks, the women resort to crime, selling bootleg liquor to the Irish mob. But as their business grows, they attract trouble from brutal gangsters, corrupt cops and their own increasingly unpredictable natures, in what the series’ creators describe as “a classic rise-and-fall gangster story of immigrants staking their claim in the land of hope and glory.”
Speaking to Variety ahead of the MIA Market, Deadpan Pictures co-founder Paul Donovan referenced series such as “Peaky Blinders” and “Babylon Berlin” when describing the appeal of “The Roaring Banshees.”
“It’s a cinematic, visual, high-end, dramatic, classic gangster saga — but also entertaining and fun,” he said. “We don’t take ourselves too seriously here. We’re out to entertain.”
Donovan recalled his first encounter with the play on which the series is based during a theater festival in Dublin. “It was a packed-out show, and it just had the audience laughing and crying and hooting and shouting and roaring on the characters,” he said.
The producer, who had previously collaborated with Morton on the Victorian-era Acorn TV period drama “Dead Still,” praised the writer’s work — “It always inherently had humor and entertainment in it,” he said — and immediately recognized the source material’s potential for adaptation.
“So much of the action necessarily happened off-stage. It was explosions and shootouts and all sorts of great action sequences that they gave the impression of happening, but you didn’t actually see them,” he said. After the show, Donovan met with Morton and McGann to make his pitch, insisting those action set pieces would look “fantastic” on screen and telling the duo, “Let’s go make a big, brave, ambitious piece of fun, cinematic TV.”
The series follows the rebel unit as they struggle to make a fresh start in America, “out of their comfort zone” and far from the cause they’d spent their lives committed to, according to Donovan.
“They’re a crack squad who fought in the war of independence in Ireland, and then they ended up on the wrong side in the Civil War thereafter. So they’re quite fired up by a cause, and the justification for the kind of violence and mayhem that they engage in,” said the producer. “But things have changed, because they’re not fighting this just cause anymore. They’re no longer soldiers. They veer towards more of a gangster lifestyle, so it’s more of gray moral world that they engage in.”
“That kind of muddy area,” he added, “is fertile ground for drama.”
“The Roaring Banshees” is written by Morton and McGann and directed by Neasa Hardiman, whose credits include the Netflix series “Untamed” and “Jessica Jones,” and the Hulu drama “We Were the Lucky Ones.” The 8 x 60’ series will be shot in Ireland and Hamilton, Ontario, which Donovan described as a convincing stand-in for 1920s Chicago.
Deadpan Pictures and Toronto-based production outfit Shaftesbury Films previously teamed up on “Irish Blood,” Acorn TV’s mystery-drama series starring Alicia Silverstone that was recently renewed for a second season.
“Between the two of us, we can bring up to 45% of the finance to the table,” said Donovan. “There’s an established relationship there, and the Irish-Canadian co-production does work really well between the different funding sources. For MIA, our challenge now is to get partners on board for the rest of the funding.”
Rome’s MIA Market runs Oct. 6 – 10.
