Chris O'Dowd's sci-fi Small Town Big Story is reaction to ‘monumental identity crisis'

Yahoo

25-02-2025

Watch: Small Town Big Story's Chris O'Dowd and Christina Hendricks discuss the sci-fi series
While he and the world was going through a "monumental identity crisis" during the Covid pandemic Chris O'Dowd decided the best thing to do was create a TV series, Small Town, Big Story to be exact.
The Sky series is created, written and directed by O'Dowd and follows TV executive Wendy who returns to her hometown in Ireland, the fictional Drumbán, to shoot her new series. However the visit brings up old wounds as she is forced to reconcile with her past with ex Séamus, and how they were once abducted by aliens — yes, really.
O'Dowd tells Yahoo UK that the series, which is led by Christina Hendricks and Paddy Considine, that it was his experience during the pandemic that made the story and Wendy Séamus's wild adventure in space, came him: "I felt that I wanted to write to the disconnection that I was feeling with the world at the time, we were in the middle of lockdown during Covid and I had been looking to film something in Ireland again and wanted to get back there.
"I'd just reread the play The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt about this woman who comes back to this European mid century town with a bit of an axe to grind and she says she's going to save everybody under one condition.
"I thought it was a fun kind of a premise and then I just started writing the odd character joke, and tried to populate this town with people that I thought would be representative of different character types within it, and I was really enjoying the repartee. Then I started thinking about what Christina's character, Wendy, would bring to a situation like that, to just pull the rug from under everybody.
"And I think while we were going through this monumental identity crisis as a society during COVID, I think I wanted for everybody else to be going through it individually, and all of those things together led to where we are."
Hendricks found playing Wendy an intriguing experience because it gave her insight into what it is like on the other side of a production, with the Mad Men star joking that she couldn't help but "posture yourself with some people you've met throughout the years and chuckle to yourself a bit."
"I sort of felt like that agent I had once or that executive that I remember," she reflects. "So it's fun to poke fun at ourselves, but also I just liked that this character went through so many different things straight off the bat. She's confronting her past and going home, seeing her family, and coming in as as an executive after years and years of being away — she's travelled the world and she's recreated who she is, and this is just where we start.
"So it's just fun to take all these clues that Chris had put in and all these different life experiences this woman has had that sort of toughened her up, made her sceptical of people. She feels like she can't trust anyone, no one's ever believed her and she's going back to the guy who experienced this very crazy thing that made her leave town.
"She is saying I'm sick of carrying around the secret, being made fun of or thought to be crazy and it's time for you to come out in the open with it 'cause I'm not doing it alone."
The actor adds that it was "wonderful" to have O'Dowd be such a presence on set, the IT Crowd star directs several episodes and also cameos as the author of the work that Hendricks' Wendy is adapting for TV.
"It's wonderful to work with the showrunner because they have the vision, they know exactly what they were thinking when they put it on the page and so it's easier to execute it," she explains.
"He can give me the notes that I need as a character because he created that character, so it's ideal to have him there and also be able to play around with the language too, because I'm not one of those people who likes to come in and change words."
When asked how they might react if they were abducted by aliens like Wendy and Séamus, both admit they'd be interested with Hendricks saying: "I'll tell you what, if I had the choice to go up safely, see what's going on in the spaceship, and come back down I'd go."
O'Dowd then jokes: "I'd go up just because I'm sick of the winter."
Small Town Big Story premieres on Sky Atlantic and NOW from Thursday, 27 February.