Queer Irish filmmaker John Butler first came on our radar with his enchanting coming-of-age movie HANDSOME DEVIL about two very likable 16-year-old boys in an Irish Boarding School.  It seemed to sidestep some of the grittier aspects of homophobia to ensure that the end result is an engaging feel-good movie that the LGBT community made it into one of the more popular hits of 2017.

Now he is the creator of THESE SACRED VOWS, a six-part comedy drama series on RTE Irish Television. It is set on a Spanish island the morning after an Irish wedding, when the priest (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor,) visiting from Diublin is found dead in the swimming pool. We soon realise that this is in fact the end of the story, so we are taken back to the week before when it all began. We are forced to really focus hard from the word go, as with a big cast composed mainly of  young wedding guests, it takes our fullest concentration to keep track and make sense of al the different plot lnes

Each episode follows a different character’s perspective (there have been 3 so far, with another 3 to come), and by the second one, we are well and truly intrigued. This one focuses on Cormac (Adam John Richardson) who seems to be ‘the only gay in the village‘ . He is dealing with a recent trauma of being gay bashed, but he is still confident and self-assured and develops a secret affair with one of the other wedding guests, who just also happens to be the (closeted) father of the bride.

Filmed in Tenerife, the show remains close to Irish soil through its storyline, casting, and distinctly Irish humour, and halfway I was hooked and eager to know how this would all spin out.  However, we were horrified to read a rather brutal review of the show in The Irish Times……it seemed like they were watching an entirely different show …… at least it’s made us determined to watch to the end ….if nothing else to prove the Irish Times was wrong, BUT also to see if Cormac will live happily ever after.