Give My Head Peace

Background

Give My Head Peace first appeared as a five-minute segment on BBC Radio Ulster's music show Across The Line during the late 1980s. That radio version already featured many of the characters and plot ideas that would later turn up in the television series. The show's debut on TV came in a made-for-television film called Two Ceasefires and a Wedding, which aired on BBC Northern Ireland on 31 August 1995. It made fun of the tired "love across the barricades" storyline common in Northern Ireland dramas.

The film focused on Emer, whose father was a prominent Sinn Féin activist, and Billy, an RUC constable. Both families opposed their wedding, which ended in farce, though Billy and Emer did end up happily married. The pilot episode introduced Ma and Da's second son, Paul. He suffered from anxiety after being wrongly imprisoned for one of Da's failed missions in England and acted as best man at Billy and Emer's wedding.

Paul only appeared in that single episode of the main series. After the pilot, BBC Northern Ireland ordered a full series. Before it aired, the format saw some changes: Cal, Emer's brother, was significantly reworked, and new recurring characters like Big Mervyn and Red Hand Luke were added. A few years into the run, Nuala McKeever, who played Emer, left the show to pursue other projects.

A new love interest for Billy was then introduced: Emer's previously unseen sister, Dympna. The series ran on BBC One Northern Ireland until 2005, when it went on hiatus as the Hole in the Wall Gang started work on a new series called Dry Your Eyes. Give My Head Peace usually occupied a prime-time Friday night slot, opting out of the network BBC One schedule. In mid-2004, a batch of episodes aired across the UK on BBC Two in a late-night weekend slot.

The 50th episode, titled "Secondary Colours," was broadcast on 27 December 2002. The final episode of Give My Head Peace aired on BBC One Northern Ireland on 28 December 2007. It was meant to be the last one, but in the closing seconds a graphic appeared reading "That's All Folks?" which hinted the show might return. Tim McGarry later said the cancellation happened because of a mis-sent email.

He claimed he hit reply instead of forward, and the message ended up with a BBC executive in charge of the show's production.

Characters

Da is a character played by Tim McGarry. He is an Irish Catholic who fits the mold of a stereotypical Irish nationalist. He loves Irish culture but knows almost nothing about Irish history and cannot speak the language. Da works as a Sinn Féin spokesman, later becomes an assemblyman, and eventually a retired assemblyman.

He takes great pride in his supposed close friendship with Gerry Adams, though the friendship is exaggerated. Da keeps getting fired for saying or doing things that embarrass Gerry or the party in public, but he usually gets his job back by blackmailing Gerry with incriminating evidence. That evidence always gets ruined by Da’s own clumsiness. To look like Gerry, Da wears a beard and glasses, except in three episodes when they had a falling out.

He brags about being involved in every illegal activity Gerry was linked to, though he later admitted he was not as involved as Gerry. Da lives in Divis Tower on the Falls Road. He has six adult children with Ma, but only four have ever appeared on screen. It was recently revealed that Da and Ma were never legally married, but Cal tricks him into marrying her again.

Cal is played by Damon Quinn. He is a grown man who still lives at home and behaves like a child. He backs his father’s self-declared fight against British imperialism and does whatever Da tells him, no matter how foolish. In the pilot episode, Cal comes across as a more menacing IRA activist, but in the main series he is much softer and a bit slow.

He often shows natural talent at various things, but his attempts to succeed usually fall apart quickly. Cal is jealous of his brother Paul, who is rarely seen. Ma often says Cal came very close to getting married until Da ruined it, but the story changes each time. In later episodes, Cal starts to suspect Da is taking the British side, and he stands up to Da when Da is cruel to Ma.

Home media

A VHS release contained three episodes: Hollywood on the Falls, Red Hand Luke, and The Peace Dividend. Only series six has been released on DVD, initially in two parts with three episodes each, later sold together as a box set; one notable edit is that the theme song was replaced. The 2016 special The Farce Awakens (21 October 2016) and the documentary A Beginner's Guide (28 December 2016), broadcast on BBC One, are both available on BBC Store.