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Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
W NETWORK DEBUTS ITS SPRING SCHEDULE WITH THIS SEASON'S FRESHEST PICKS
New Series Include Peacock Comedy Laid, Sky Original Series Small Town, Big Story, Plus Hallmark Channel's The Chicken Sisters and Small Town Setup This Spring Will Also See the Season Finales of The Way Home, Season 3 and Based on a True Story, Season 2 Stream W Network on STACKTV For additional photography and press kit material visit: To share this release socially visit: TORONTO, March 10, 2025 /CNW/ - This spring, W Network, a Corus Entertainment top 10 specialty network*, is blooming with freshly picked new series featuring star-studded performances, humour and heart. This season, W Network ushers in new comedies such as Laid and Small Town, Big Story as well as Hallmark's family drama The Chicken Sisters and Hallmark's unscripted series Small Town Setup. All series are available to stream on STACKTV. First to spring onto the schedule is Peacock's twisted romantic comedy, Laid, starring Academy Award®-nominee Stephanie Hsu and Zosia Mamet. Premiering on Monday, March 24 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, a woman (Hsu) finds out her former lovers are dying in unusual ways and must go back through her sex timeline to confront her past in order to move forward. Laid is a dark rom-com where the answer to "why can't I find love, is there something wrong with me?" is a resounding "Yes. There is. The problem is definitely you." Up next is the dramatic comedy Small Town, Big Story premiering Thursday, March 27 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Created and directed by Emmy® Award winner Chris O'Dowd (Moone Boy), the series stars Emmy® nominee Christina Hendricks (Good Girls, Mad Men) and BAFTA award-winner Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon, The World's End), and looks at the untold chaos caused when a big budget Hollywood production rolls into a small, rural Irish town. Wendy Patterson (Hendricks) is a local girl who found success as a TV producer in Los Angeles, returns to her hometown in Ireland after over 20 years, having left under something of a cloud. Back in the chaotic microcosm of Drumbán, this time with a film crew in tow, Wendy is caught in between her past and her epic new production. Séamus Proctor (Considine) is the local doctor and pillar of the community. He has a neat and well-ordered life, or at least he thinks he does. Soon, he will find himself in the eye of a storm as a celluloid circus descends on the town, threatening to shine a spotlight on a secret he's been harbouring for ages. On Sunday, March 30 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, W Network serves up new Hallmark series, The Chicken Sisters, based on the New York Times bestseller and Reese's Book Club selection of the same name by KJ Dell'Antonia. Created for television and executive produced by Annie Mebane (Shrinking, Atypical, The Goldbergs), the eight-episode series is a family drama dipped in southern charm and served up with a saucy side of romance. The setting is the fictional town of Merinac, where a generations-old rift between dueling fried chicken restaurants – Mimi's and Frannie's – has left the founders' families fractured and the locals taking sides. When the popular cooking competition show Ultimate Kitchen Clash comes to town, it could be the recipe for ending this feud once and for all. But things are fixing to heat up both inside and outside of the kitchen as the reality show spotlight causes sparks to fly as secrets are spilled and feathers get ruffled. The series boasts an impressive cast, including Schuyler Fisk (Sam & Kate), Genevieve Angelson (The Handmaid's Tale), Lea Thompson (Back to the Future) and Wendie Malick (Just Shoot Me!) as the women at the heart of the restaurant rivalry. James Kot (Virgin River), Rukiya Bernard (Yellowjackets), Ektor Rivera (Groundswell) and Jake Foy (Ride) round out the supporting cast. Emmy® Award-winning actress Margo Martindale (Justified) lends her voice as the nearly omniscient narrator, who serves up history and offers country fried context the way only the best town gossip can. Following the premiere of The Chicken Sisters on March 30, Small Town Setup debuting at 9 p.m. ET/PT, explores the unique charm of small-town America and its welcoming community in this heartwarming unscripted, romantic comedy docu-style dating series, hosted by Ashley Williams. In each episode, viewers meet different hometown parents with a big problem – their successful adult child is living far away in a big city – and is still single. The couple gathers their neighbours and asks for help to find a match for them to go out with. Now, the entire community is on the hunt to find the best three daters for the "city single" to go on dates with, in the hope that they will fall in love, move back home and live happily ever after. This spring will also see the Season 3 finale of the multi-generational family drama and top 5 specialty entertainment program** The Way Home on Sunday, March 16 at 9 p.m. ET/PT and the Season 2 finale of the dark comedic thriller Based on a True Story on Monday, March 17 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. W Network can be streamed via STACKTV, available on Amazon Prime Video Channels, Bell Fibe TV app, Fubo, Rogers Ignite TV and Ignite Streaming. The network is also available through all major TV distributors, including: Shaw, Shaw Direct, Rogers, Bell, Videotron, Telus, Cogeco, Eastlink and SaskTel. *Source: Numeris PPM Data, Total Canada, FL'24 (Aug 26 – Dec29/24), SP'25 STD (Dec 30/24 – Feb 9/25) confirmed to Feb 2/25, A25-54, AMA(000), CDN SPEC COM ENG, M-Su 2a-2a**Source: Numeris PPM Data, Total Canada, SP'24 (Jan 1 – May 26/24), 3+ airings, SP'25 STD (Dec 30/24 – Feb 9/25) 2+ airings, confirmed to Feb 2/25, CDN SPEC COM ENG excluding sports SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS: Follow W Network on Facebook, InstagramFollow STACKTV on Instagram @stacktv W Network is a Corus Entertainment Network. About Corus Entertainment Inc. Corus Entertainment Inc. (TSX: CJR.B) is a leading media and content company that develops and delivers high quality brands and content across platforms for audiences around the world. Engaging audiences since 1999, the company's portfolio of multimedia offerings encompass 30 specialty television services, 37 radio stations, 15 conventional television stations, digital and streaming platforms, and social digital agency and media services. Corus' roster of premium brands includes Global Television, W Network, Flavour Network, Home Network, The HISTORY® Channel, Showcase, Adult Swim, National Geographic and Global News, along with streaming platforms STACKTV, TELETOON+, the Global TV App and Curiouscast. Corus is also the domestic advertising representative and an original content partner for Pluto TV, a Paramount Company, which is the leading free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service. Corus is an internationally-renowned content creator, producer and distributor through Corus Studios and Nelvana. For more information visit SOURCE Corus Entertainment Inc. View original content:
The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in TV: Toxic Town; Small Town, Big Story; Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October; Dope Girls
Toxic Town (Netflix)Small Town, Big Story (Sky Max)Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7 October (BBC Two) | iPlayerDope Girls (BBC One) | iPlayer Sometimes TV drama has a job to do: drag skeletons out of closets and let them rattle. So it is with Toxic Town, the four-part Netflix real-life drama from Jack Thorne, initially set in the mid-1990s, about industrial poisonings in 1980s/90s Corby, Northamptonshire that led to birth defects, including missing limbs. The son of outspoken Susan (Jodie Whittaker) has a hand affected; the daughter of gentle Tracey (Aimee Lou Wood) dies soon after birth. Maggie, played by Claudia Jessie from Bridgerton, has a son with a disfigured foot. Many others are born with abnormalities, caused by lethal dust irresponsibly churned up by the protracted and mishandled clean-up and redevelopment of a former steel plant in the 1980s and 90s, leading to a 2009 court case that set a legal precedent for a link between airborne toxins and birth defects. Corby is another character here – an area struggling to regenerate, with some people prepared to cut health and safety corners to ensure it does so. Scottish accents are everywhere (so many Scots settled in Corby, it was dubbed 'Little Scotland'). Toxic Town also features male acting powerhouses: Downton Abbey's Brendan Coyle as the council boss ('New Labour, new Corby'); Robert Carlyle as a whistleblowing councillor; Michael Socha and Joe Dempsie as fathers; Rory Kinnear as a dogged decent lawyer. At heart, though, Toxic Town is about working-class mothers who refuse to belt up. In a drama so steeped in maternal anger and grief, it's crucial that the women are convincing, and they are, in particular Whittaker as fiery, lairy Susan ('Keep your wig on!'). At times, exposition billows around almost as much as the noxious dust, and there's too much emphasis on woolly legal minutiae. Nor is it quite at the level of Mr Bates vs the Post Office, though (spoiler alert) it is stirring to witness the mothers win their case (even if, as stated in a postscript, no one faced criminal charges and there are still toxic landfills everywhere). Those concerns aside, Toxic Town emerges as a complex, devastating story told with heart. Respect for its subjects pours from the screen. What exactly is Small Town, Big Story, the new Sky Max series created, written and directed by Chris O'Dowd (The IT Crowd)? It's a comedy-drama about a Hollywood TV production invading the fictional Irish town of Drumbán to make a terrible Games of Thrones-esque fantasy series called I Am Celt. It also has a sci-fi element, with dead birds falling from the sky, and an incident involving a Hollywood producer (Christina Hendricks of Mad Men fame) and Drumbán doctor (Paddy Considine) back when they were teenage sweethearts. O'Dowd shows up as a rascally creative, but the cast is led by Hendricks and Considine, whose wheelchair-user teacher wife (Eileen Walsh) steals the show with her unabashed sexual antics. Elsewhere, much of the humour lies in the eccentricity of the locals, which gets a little wearing (it's funniest when it's character-based and dry). At the end of six episodes, STBS remains confusing – kind of an Irish Local Hero meets Seth Rogen's Paul – but at its best it's entertaining – and the fantasy show spoofing ('Oi am Celt!') is genuinely funny. Any chance Sky could make it for real? Documentarian Norma Percy is known for tackling huge, serious subjects (from The Death of Yugoslavia to Putin vs the West). Her new three-part BBC Two docuseries, Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7 October, largely focuses on the two decades leading up to the Hamas atrocities in Israel in 2023. Some may consider this too tight a time-frame for such a sprawling, labyrinthine subject, but it enables Percy to focus on her speciality: accessing central players and letting them speak. Interviewees include former prime ministers (Israel's Ehud Omert and Tony Blair) and also, controversially, Hamas leaders Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh (the latter was assassinated weeks after his interview). Elsewhere, there are diplomats, politicians and former US secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. 'American secretaries of state are like moths to a flame when it comes to the Middle East,' observes Rice, wryly. You watch as sundry US presidents (Obama, Trump, Biden) attempt to help establish the two-state solution with Palestine's former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime ministers, including Ariel Sharon, Omert and Benjamin Netanyahu. As shown here, everything fails: from the time it is elected, Hamas refuses to recognise Israel as a state or lay down arms; in turn, there is the expansion of Israeli settlements on the West Bank in violation of international law, and the bombing of the Al-Aqsa mosque. A torrent of reasons are aired, too numerous and complicated to list here. The events of 7 October barely feature, which feels jarring (especially considering the ongoing hostage situation), but then neither is there much on the bombing of Gaza. In the main, this is a docuseries that opts to stay impartial and maintain strict focus on the two decades of Middle Eastern and international politics. Percy's take isn't perfect (you sense she was overwhelmed with material and could have easily included a fourth instalment), but as a detailed, measured overview, it delivers. Having caught up with new BBC drama Dope Girls, I've learned that it's not the failed female Peaky Blinders I was expecting. Created and written by Polly Stenham and Alex Warren, it's set in London in the chaotic, violent aftermath of the first world war and focuses on women embracing lawlessness to set up a nightclub while a vicious Italian crime family hovers in the background. Delivering a tale of butchered bodies, drugs, occultism, sexual excess and more, the cast is strong: Julianne Nicholson (Mare of Easttown) is a mother driven to desperate lengths; Umi Myers plays an avant-garde dancer; Eliza Scanlen (Sharp Objects) is a dead-eyed undercover policewoman. Over six episodes, Dope Girls is scuppered repeatedly by grating production flourishes (scribblings on the screen, and the like) and overcooked symbolism (the first episode has Nicholson wandering around in angel wings like a festival teenager addled on CBD gummies). But the atmosphere is less Steven Knight, more Sarah Waters meets Angela Carter: left-field, dreamlike, female-centric, wild. Dope Girls can be overblown and messy, but it's also passionate and promising. Star ratings (out of five) Toxic Town ★★★★Small Town, Big Story ★★★Israel and the Palestinians: The Road to 7th October ★★★★Dope Girls ★★★ 1923(Paramount+) Much-anticipated second series return for Taylor Sheridan's gnarled, gritty western (a Yellowstone prequel), starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. David Frost Vs (Sky Documentaries) A fascinating retrospective series of excerpts from Frost interviews, in which he verbally spars with everyone from Muhammad Ali to the Beatles. One for fans of the classic 20th-century long-form television interview. Loch Ness: They Created a Monster(BBC Two) Offbeat documentary about 'Nessie' that's also about the people from all over the world, from scientific teams to eccentrics, who yearn to glimpse the beast of Scottish Highlands legend.
The Guardian
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Small Town, Big Story review – Christina Hendricks is terrifying in Chris O'Dowd's wacky Irish comedy
How much you enjoy Small Town, Big Story will depend on how you feel first about whimsy and second about genre mashups. If your appetite for both is large, then Chris O'Dowd's creation (he wrote and directed) has plenty to make you happy. If not, you might find the whole thing a little too underpowered to keep you going. Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men fame, plays hard-bitten TV producer Wendy Patterson. She is in charge of her first big Hollywood production and returns to her tiny home town of Drumbán in Northern Ireland (after 25 years in Los Angeles surrounded by fat-cat bosses and patronising colleagues) to shoot it there. This follows shenanigans by Drumbán's more colourful and eccentric characters to keep the location scouts from choosing a more tax-advantageous site across the border; these shenanigans include a pig's head on a stick and a sign saying 'Death to the infidels', which, you know … well, OK, all right. Not even so much from an offence-giving point of view but from an 'Is this remotely credible in this particular world?' position. Trying to keep the gang of misfits in order is, for some reason, the town GP, Séamus Proctor (Paddy Considine), a happily married man – unless he finds out about the affair his wife, Catherine (Eileen Walsh), is having with a fellow teacher – and leading a life of contentment until Wendy reappears. It is clear by the end of the first episode that they have history and by the end of the second episode, not exactly the history you might assume. Though there is a bit of that kind of history, too. ('I went for your tit,' Séamus recalls of their pivotal night in the woods on the eve of the millennium, 'and that move proved contentious.') There are lots of things jostling for the viewer's attention. An elderly patient who keeps warning the good doctor 'They're coming for you.' A fellow producer, Brad (Tim Heidecker), back in LA trying to undermine Wendy from afar. The mandatory comic scenes as local residents try out for parts as extras. The location scout Jules (Patrick Martins) falling for world-weary barmaid Shelly (Evanne Kilgallon) – though Jules himself is such an abject simpleton as to be wholly unemployable in the real world, and the necessary suspension of disbelief in the whole takes another knock. There is the terrible young football team whose unremitting badness Séamus (the coach) puts down to them all having been born the year the reservoir was poisoned by sheep carcasses. A gentle air of amusement pervades the episodes, with some nice touches strewn about (from the TV boss with an immunocompromised dog to Catherine's speech to her class about the difference between myth and legend). A certain charm begins to exert itself as a plot begins to cohere, too. Wendy and the crew become increasingly enmeshed with Drumbán life – especially once Wendy is forced to cast gym owner and would-be entrepreneur Jimmy (Sam C Wilson) in the starring role when her A-lister drops out. Jimmy is desperate to pay off his IVF bills and court cases of an unspecified nature after the failure of Big Jim's Jim-Jams ('Covid dampened people's spirits for two-person pyjamas') and is overjoyed by the prospect of fame and fortune. Brad does CrossFit with Armie Hammer's orthodontist and offers to see if he can get the blacklisted star on the comeback trail, but Wendy declines. The meat of the story, though, is in the relationship between Wendy and Séamus and his betrayal of her after the events in the woods, the ramifications of which forced her out of town. The comedy drama takes on better shape and heft around the question of how much we need to be believed and how cruel the world – and parents – can be if we are not. Now Séamus has a chance to right that wrong but at huge cost to himself. Does he owe it to his erstwhile girlfriend? Must we always tell the truth, no matter how absurd it sounds and when it can do us no good whatsoever? What if it's Christina Hendricks standing in front of you, alternately ice and fire, and equally terrifying in either mode? I don't think anyone would envy Séamus his choice. Small Town, Big Story airs on Sky Max and is available on Now
Telegraph
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Small Town, Big Story, review: Chris O'Dowd's new ‘Oirish' dramedy wastes a stellar cast
Father Ted meets The X-Files isn't the worst elevator pitch in the history of television. Sadly, whatever promise the idea holds is squandered in Chris O'Dowd dramedy Small Town, Big Story (Sky Max). O'Dowd wrote the script for the six-part series 'in the pits of lockdown'. True to its origins, the show – in which Christina Hendricks plays a Hollywood producer returning home to the small Irish town where she grew up – has a cabin-fever quality and tries to cram in too many ideas. It begins with a flashback to the eve of the new millennium, where young lovers Wendy and Séamus are in a state of drug-induced euphoria when aliens seemingly interrupt their late-night tryst in the woodlands of County Fermanagh. Are the visitors real – or a vision induced by an excess of recreational pharmaceuticals? The question is left to hang as we fast-forward to the present day. Wendy (Hendricks) is coming back to fictional Drumbán with a view to shooting a Game of Thrones-style Celtic saga. Séamus (a woebegone Paddy Considine) has never left and is now a local GP in the throes of a midlife malaise. O'Dowd, who co-directed and stars as a Hollywood screenwriter, was inspired by his experience of bringing a big-time television production to his home town of Boyle, Co Roscommon, for his Sky comedy, Moone Boy. But he fails to replicate Moone Boy's deftness. If anything, the portrayal of small-town Ireland veers worryingly close at times to a Martin McDonagh-style unhinged Blarney-fest. The saving grace is the chemistry between Hendricks (wisely avoiding an Irish accent) and Considine as old flames reunited. Considine is especially impressive, bringing an aching pathos to a clichéd part of a middle-aged man whose life is falling around him (his wheelchair-bound wife, played by Eileen Walsh, is having an affair). But his and Hendricks's hard work runs aground on a screenplay that can't make up its mind how Oirish it wants to be and which then crowbars in a flying saucer mystery with all the subtlety of Father Ted's Jack Hackett downing a bottle of poitín.
The Independent
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Christina Hendricks on Small Town, Big Story: ‘My husband saw a UFO!'
Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter C hristina Hendricks has seen an alien. Well, a UFO, really – but still. She's even got a picture on her phone to prove it. I am told this story matter-of-factly by the Mad Men actor when I enquire as to whether she and Chris O'Dowd believe in extra-terrestrial life. 'I think there has to be,' she says simply. It's a relevant question, given the plot of their new joint venture, Small Town, Big Story . Created by O'Dowd (who also cameos in a few episodes), the six-part Sky Atlantic show follows Hollywood producer Wendy Patterson (Hendricks) as she returns home to the fictional Irish town of Drumbán where she was born in order to shoot a ludicrous 'historical' fiction adaptation called I Am Celt . It soon transpires that Wendy and her former flame Seamus (Paddy Considine), now the local doctor, underwent a mystifying, out-of-this-world experience as teenagers – one that forever altered the course of their lives. The tone sits somewhere between comedy and melodrama – O'Dowd was aiming for 'opera', he says – as the cast of misfit characters uncover more about the town's long history of attracting interstellar visitors. Yes, alien abduction might seem a somewhat fantastical notion, but, suggests O'Dowd, it's no more outlandish than the fae and woodland spirits that often typify tales set in Ireland – or, in fact, the idea of God. 'Inarguably, it's not even close that those two things are as likely. It's very un likely that we are the only species in the universe. We're too imperfect for that to be the case. And if we're so imperfect, how could somebody have bothered creating us?' He's not ruling out Area 51-style conspiracy theories either. 'It may be that we've had many first encounters that we haven't treated with violence – and they're all being held somewhere that you'd never know about.' Following in the footsteps of recent dramadies (see Netflix's excellent Bodkin ) that capitalise on our collective fascination with all things Ireland – history, folklore, superstitions – Small Town, Big Story cannily subverts the genre by centring around a different supernatural element altogether. This, says O'Dowd, was intentional. 'There is a train of thought that's going on during this Gaelic Revival period we're going through now, where a lot of those folk stories are maybe trying to tell us about biodiversity issues and a lot of native knowledge that gets lost when you're colonised and your language is taken from you,' he muses. 'A lot of these stories, particularly in the middle cycle of Irish mythology, could almost be about more cosmic stuff. And we don't yet know that it's not.' He cites medieval Irish-language narrative The Voyage of Bran , in which 'space and time are interpreted in a very different way than we would interpret them now'. But back to his cast's 'UFO' sightings. Considine has allegedly seen one too – an object in the sky that shot straight up in the air and then back down – while unpacking the shopping. 'He was with his wife, and they were putting away groceries, and he was like, 'Wait! Stop! Look!'' says O'Dowd. 'And she said, 'Oh, yeah, that's mad. Would you get the last of the things from the car?'' Hendricks and her husband George were met with similar ambivalence after their own close encounter, which happened when they were settling into South Dublin prior to filming. 'She said, 'George just saw a UFO from out on the balcony',' remembers O'Dowd. 'I went out real quick to try to see it, and I didn't see it…' 'But we showed you a picture!' comes Hendricks's indignant response. 'And it was clear as day,' O'Dowd says placatingly. Chris O'Dowd cameos in his new Sky show 'Small Town, Big Story' alongside leading lady Christina Hendricks (Sky) They make a quirky double-act, one that gives a sense of art mimicking real life when it comes to the show. Wendy is a larger-than-life force of nature, gilded by a lacquer of LA glamour that makes her stand out in saturated technicolour against the soggy backdrop of rural Northern Ireland. 'I remember somebody mentioning Christina's name. And I was like, f***, can you imagine if we got Christina Hendricks?' O'Dowd recalls of casting his lead. His wife, Dawn O'Porter, provided the missing link via a fashion contact. 'We thought, 'God, she'd be great',' continues O'Dowd. 'She's comedically adept, and she's so strong and so… Hollywood, in a way.' 'I'm not Hollywood!' 'Yes, you are.' I'm afraid I have to agree with O'Dowd on this one: Hendricks emanates pure, unadulterated La La Land. In a good way – she cuts a dazzling figure, her perfectly coiffed red hair, demurely high-necked flamingo-pink dress and matching kitten heels about as far away as you can get from O'Dowd's laid-back style. Sitting beside her and dressed in jeans, a black tee and muted green shirt, he looks indistinguishable from his much-loved IT Crowd character, Roy. It's very unlikely that we are the only species in the universe. We're too imperfect for that to be the case 'The shorthand of that is there's a powerful glamour to Hollywood, and then Wendy comes into the middle of this town…' he says. 'It seemed to make sense to make her American, and that she had moved away. She was trying to discover and reinvent herself.' Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled Try for free Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 days New subscribers only. £8.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled Try for free This speaks to another big theme of the show: that of homecoming, and the pull our roots inevitably end up exerting. O'Dowd wrote it partly in response to spending lockdown in Toronto, Canada. 'I was walking through a ravine that was filled with fir trees, and it just reminded me of being home in the northwest of Ireland. I felt very far away, and everybody felt very disconnected and untethered.' Even when you've been away longer than you lived in a place – in O'Dowd's case, 25 years – home still acts 'like a magnet'. Christina Hendricks stars as Wendy, a Hollywood producer who returns home to rural Ireland (Sky) For Hendricks, the question of home comes with its own complications. 'I moved around quite a bit as a kid, and anytime anyone's asked me, 'Where's home?', I don't really have an answer,' she explains. 'So I chose the one that I felt was a very happy time in my life.' That was Twin Falls, Idaho. There are very few people still there who she knows; 'When I go back, I don't know what I'm looking for,' she admits. 'But also there's this draw to go back, and the memories and the feeling that I had when I was there…' The UK also serves as a strong point of connection – though Hendricks's dad moved to the States as a child, he was born in Birmingham. 'As I got older, I realised we had these Britishisms in our house that maybe other kids didn't have,' she says. 'We were a tea-drinking family, and my dad put butter and marmalade on his sandwiches.' Hendricks lived in London for a spell while working as a model in the Nineties and 'absolutely fell in love', surrounded by Britpop, art, fashion and, of course, the Spice Girls. 'I was living here at a spectacular time,' she remembers excitedly of her Cool Britannia days. 'And I just became a crazy Anglophile, and now I come back all the time.' I am such a blabbermouth, I don't think I could keep something that massive to myself Is the notion that all Americans are obsessed with their heritage and ancestry really true? 'We want roots so badly,' she says. 'But there's also this thing, because I colour my hair red – I'm not even a natural redhead – people go, 'Oh, you must be Irish.' And I go, 'No, actually, I'm not.' And they go, 'There's some Irish in there.' Basically, everyone in the United States thinks they're Irish.' Perhaps it's unsurprising. There are an estimated 60 million people in America with Irish heritage; that's 'a vast wave of people who have very, very short roots,' says O'Dowd. And roots aren't so much of a problem for native Irish people. 'Especially if you've stayed where you are your whole life – there's an O'Dowd castle from the 10th century 10 miles from Boyle,' he adds. 'So we haven't moved far.' Boyle, O'Dowd's hometown, gets a nod in Small Town, Big Story , as the rival potential filming location for I Am Celt . It's not the first time he's taken a camera crew home with him: O'Dowd set all three seasons of sitcom Moone Boy there over a decade ago. His new series is, in part, a TV show about making a TV show, and highlights the inevitable overwhelm that occurs when the circus of Hollywood descends upon a tiny community. Was he conscious of not upsetting the locals with his production? Action: 'Small Town, Big Story' is a TV show about making a TV show (Sky) 'I know how people react when you come back and come back and come back, and the novelty wears off fairly quickly for them,' he says. It's 'an awful lot of pressure' filming when you have skin in the game: 'If you're in a random town somewhere, and somebody's complaining that their driveway is blocked for a bit, you're like, 'Oh, I hope somebody sorts that out.' But if it's your hometown, it's like, ' I better go and sort that out…'' In a small town, it's hard not to care what other people think – a fact that's crucial to Small Town, Big Story 's driving narrative. After their mind-bending abduction experience, Seamus keeps schtum, too scared of being judged to admit the truth. Wendy, meanwhile, speaks out – and pays the price, becoming an instant laughing stock. Again, art imitates life, says Hendricks. 'I am such a blabbermouth, I don't think I could keep something that massive to myself. Case in point – I did blab to everyone. I literally stopped someone on the street and said, 'My husband saw a UFO!' And pretty much no one believed me.' And O'Dowd? 'I don't know if I would tell anybody, because I don't think anybody would believe you,' he says. 'Maybe I'd just write about it?' 'Small Town, Big Story' is available on Sky Atlantic and Now
