The man making American game shows in rural Ireland

Yahoo

09-05-2025

Brat Pack actor Rob Lowe is best known for St Elmo's Fire and Oxford Blues, plus his long-running roles in The West Wing, Parks and Recreation. As leading dramatic roles have dried up he has also, since last year, presented The Floor, a Fox game show that offers a contestant a winning prize of $250,000 (£190,000).
So far, so normal for a 1980s star. But all is not as it seems. Unusually for a glossy American game show – with an American host and contestants, plus suitably enthusiastic live studio audience – it is entirely filmed more than 5,000 miles away from Hollywood in Bray, just outside Dublin.
Lowe, 61, remarked why he has to schlep so far away from his California home on a recent episode of his podcast. 'It's cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox, past the sound stages, and do it there,' Lowe said. 'There are no tax credits, so like, all those other places are offering 40 per cent. And then on top of that, there's other stuff that they do.'
In comments made in March, the star pre-empted Donald Trump's announcement that he would slap 100 per cent tariffs on films made outside the United States amid an exodus of productions from the industry's traditional Hollywood home. 'It's criminal what California and LA have let happen – it's criminal,' Lowe said. 'Everybody should be fired.'
Ireland has, in recent decades, managed to lure huge productions to film there, ranging from Game of Thrones and the Star Wars sequel films to the second series of Wednesday, Netflix's hit Tim Burton series starring Jenna Ortega.
What has gone under the radar is how rapidly unscripted shows synonymous with the American style have landed in Ireland, with executives attracted by generous tax breaks and talented behind-the-camera crews. Filming such game shows – including Don't Forget the Lyrics, Name That Tune and Jamie Foxx's Beat Shazam – in Ireland rather than California can save producers as much as 25 per cent of the cost without compromising quality. Many American viewers do not even know that they are not made in the US, with a small line in the credits typically saying that they were filmed in Ireland.
The architect of all this is Shane Byrne, an Irish producer whose career credits include reality behemoths such as Big Brother, The X Factor, The Circle, Britain's Got Talent, and Strictly Come Dancing.
The American invasion of Ireland began in 2021, when Fox reckoned it would be cheaper to trial new reality formats by commissioning entire new series and airing them in a country with similar demographics to America. Byrne was tapped to be executive producer of The Big Deal, a talent show hosted by Vogue Williams and judges included Boy George, X Factor alumni Jedward and Aston Merrygold, formerly of JLS. For the cost of a single, un-broadcast pilot episode shot in the US, Fox got a whole six-episode run that ran on Virgin Media One in Ireland.
After that experiment was judged a success, Fox bosses migrated production of Name That Tune – the long-running show in which contestants have to correctly identify songs being played by an orchestra or band – from Sydney, where it had been filming because of looser coronavirus restrictions on studio audiences, to Dublin. Then, Byrne says, 'they started to roll over the other shows that would come here'. Don't Forget the Lyrics and Gordon Ramsay's Next Level Chef are just some of the programmes that are being made in Ireland by production house BiggerStage for American audiences.
Producers in Hollywood 'know that due to the unions they have priced themselves out of work', according to Byrne, while British and Irish crews tend not to be unionised, dramatically reducing costs. The Irish productions tend to have crews of about 300, from cameramen to caterers. American producers fly to Ireland with a small coterie around them, with 95 per cent of the crew being locals. An entire series, of between 12 and 16 episodes, can be shot in a fortnight and the budgets of up to $1 million-per-episode goes further than it does in America.
However, the Irish programme-makers have to adjust from how they would create their own series. 'They have to be very high-end, very glossy and, essentially, look very American and expensive,' Byrne says. 'You need people that understand American sensibilities. Obviously, American television has a slightly different tone than the shows we would make for the UK or Ireland. You have got to get into that zone of making American television for an American audience.'
With hosts and contestants being shipped in from the US, getting the live audience right is of paramount importance, especially as American networks still favour tight close-ups of those in the studio. Producers pay special attention to getting a mix of genders, races and ages among audience members. Unlike similar British productions, which advertise free tickets to members of the public, audiences on many of these Irish productions tend to be selected from open casting calls on websites hosting classified adverts for acting extras. Those chosen are paid for their time.
'When it comes to an audience, you have to make sure that, at a glance, if you were watching the show in America it doesn't stand out – that it wouldn't look like an 'American' audience,' says Byrne. 'As a producer, I pay particular attention to the audiences to make sure that they are a diverse range of people that are all having a great time.'
Despite lamenting the state of California productions in his podcast, Lowe said that Dublin is 'great' and 'fantastic', while Jamie Foxx frequently posts selfies as he appears to enjoy working in Ireland. The A-list talent may not wish to be working so far from home but, Byrne says, they quickly adjust. 'I think they're perplexed sometimes. It feels quite random to them, but as soon as they're here they understand that it's here for a reason – because it's economical. There's efficiencies, and it allows the network to keep making the show and, essentially, keep them employed,' he says. 'When they're here and we're in the studio, we could be anywhere and we're just making the show as normal.'
Byrne left BiggerStage (which tends to work with Fox) last year and has since co-founded Diffusion Media, which he says will come up with its own unscripted formats and offer similar production services to other large American networks. 'There are lots of other networks interested… They're all paying attention to what Fox has been doing and curious about what they're doing in Ireland,' he says. 'When you see comments like Rob Lowe's taking off, that is kind of good news for the Irish industry.'
As with anybody doing business with Americans these days, there is a new element of unpredictability thrown into the mix: missives coming out of the White House. The film and TV industries had been relatively unaffected by the President's second coming until his mooted tariff plans at the start of the week. 'When Trump makes comments, everyone gets shaken up because they don't know what's coming.'
The Irish government, for its part, is looking to lure even more unscripted productions from America with a new tax credit of up to 20 per cent on eligible spending.
Byrne tells me that he is not overly concerned about the negative impact on his business from Trump's efforts to Make Hollywood Great Again. 'This whole thing ultimately doesn't make sense because production services – whether it's a film or a TV show – are so nuanced… it would be really hard to pinpoint what you put a tariff on and what you don't,' he says. 'People are curious to see where it's going to go. The random nature of Jon Voight being involved and submitting his ideas… the whole thing kind of becomes a bit farcical.'
'For a number of years, people have been leaving Hollywood to make TV and film in other places, and it would be naive to think that they're not trying to think of ways they can bring business back,' Byrne adds. 'But hopefully we can all meet in the middle.'
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