How The Inbetweeners Movie triggered a Gaelic film and TV new wave
|
Version 0 of 1. As the independence debate convulses Scotland, something is stirring on the Isle of Skye’s Sleat peninsula. Not some long-dead Celtic monster, but something more abstract: the dawning of a new era for Scotland’s ancient language, Gaelic. Studios are being built, TV dramas are being shot, a new generation of Gaelic-speaking actors and directors are being offered work opportunities, and a new wave of Dogme-style feature films are being planned. It’s a serious, ongoing attempt to establish a permanent Scots Gaelic moving-image culture that can resist the vagaries of tokenism, subsidy, and community enthusiasm. And the irony is that it wouldn’t have happened without a bunch of gormless English teenagers. Specifically, this Gaelic revival owes a startling amount to the success of The Inbetweeners, first in sitcom and then in movie form. The Inbetweeners’ popular TV run, followed by the film spinoff that shocked the entire UK film industry with its record-breaking box office performance, resulted in an upturn in fortunes for its Skye-based producer, Chris Young. Virtually overnight, Young secured the kind of clout most producers can only fantasise about. And instead of heading off to LA, or London, Young has done the opposite, turning his attention to establishing a working film and TV industry in the island that has been his home for 15 years. It’s not hard to understand the significance of Gaelic in Scotland in its current mood: dominant in the medieval period, but pushed back as English incursions increased in the 17th and 18th centuries, the language is now estimated to have about 60,000 speakers. The decline in its use appears to have halted, but it undoubtedly represents something powerful. As Young says: “The political shift to a desire for independence has given Gaelic a boost. It’s made its voice louder, which is a natural consequence of the fact that it brings value to a notion of separate identity.” The most visible sign of the Gaelic surge is the TV series that Young is now shooting on Sleat. Called Bannan, it’s the first Gaelic-language TV series in decades – in fact, since the 90s soap Machair, set on the Outer Hebridean island of Lewis. But, as Young’s fellow producer Morag Stewart is at pains to point out, Bannan is aiming for a higher level. For one thing, the script is actually written in Gaelic, unlike Machair. “For years,” says Stewart, “we’ve had English speakers writing scripts, and people then being brought into translate. That makes such a difference. Chrisella Ross, our writer, had no TV experience, but she is very much rooted in the Gaelic community.” The series is being funded through BBC Alba, the Gaelic-language channel that has been operating since 2008. With programming so far dominated (unsurprisingly) by music and sport, the production of Bannan marks a major step forward: a classy, ambitious series that plugs a big gap in Alba’s output. As Stewart points out: “The channel is at a stage that they have to make drama.” Crucially, though, BBC Alba receives much of its funding from the Scottish government, and can therefore circumvent the standard BBC commissioning process – which, tellingly, everyone involved in Bannan considers entirely uninterested in Gaelic programming. Tony Kearney, lead director on Bannan (and, incidentally, a child actor in that earlier Gaelic soap Machair) speaks for all: “BBC Alba is facilitating stories that just wouldn’t be told on BBC1 or 2, or BBC Scotland. They have to go London to get money - and competition is so hard and money is so tight, that Scottish stores that merit being told just aren’t.” Bannan is due to be transmitted on 23 September, five days after Scotland’s referendum poll. It may – or may not – become the first Gaelic drama series in an independent Scotland. Either way, it will be a landmark. Young says he has been looking to the Scandinavian model – “they have a much more integrated film and TV culture” – and was explicitly inspired by the success of subtitled series like The Killing and Borgen. “Our show is nothing like them, content-wise, but it is definitely the case that what would, 10 years ago, have been unthinkable - a subtitled TV drama having any commercial value - is no longer the case.” Slowly, it seems, the mainstream is catching up with Gaelic. That would seem to apply to feature-film making, too. Back in 2007, Young produced a film called Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle; it was only the second Gaelic-language movie in history and, by his own admission, it was tough to make any kind of commercial impact. He also had a very public falling-out with Bafta, after they failed to put the film forward for the best foreign-language Oscar (“I think they thought it just wasn’t worth bothering with”). Now, however, charged up by The Inbetweeners Movie, Young is looking to get cracking with another Scandi-inspired project, a Dogme-style film about contemporary Gaelic life. “It’s not that different from anywhere else in the UK. Everyone in Uist, or Lewis, has satellite TV and the internet, they’re taking drugs just like everyone else, there’s the same amount of petty crime. The representation of Scottish rural life tends to be very Monarch of the Glen, or The Queen – a frustratingly pastoral, idyllic treatment. But in the Outer Hebrides, especially, people are living on the edge in lots of ways.” Whichever way the referendum vote goes, there’s no doubt that Gaelic is on the upswing. Whether it can sustain that trajectory is another matter. Some grumble that it is benefiting from preferential treatment, in terms of subsidy and the like, but Kearney is having none of it. “I say: ‘What’s the alternative?’ Two generations back, my grandparents were belted for speaking Gaelic. It was falsely taken away from them, so I feel we can have help to put it back again.” |