Episode 1:
Sean Caught at The Thirsty Fisherman
‘ANNOUNCER: Welcome everyone. Tonight, we have the pleasure of offering you the first episode of ‘The Quirkes,’ the story of a couple living with their children in Crow Hill, a crossroads farming hamlet in rural Ireland. It is 9:30 PM and Sean is watching ‘High Chaparral,’ as he does every Saturday night with religious fidelity, sleeping soundly on the couch. Moira stands leaning against the frame of the kitchen door. She is polishing a diner plate and daydreaming, away with the fairies.
SEAN: (SNORING) Nenagh, gaaha, frontage, ahhh, zzzz, Tina, aagh. (ETC. EXTEMPORANEOUDLY)
MOIRA: Sean, Sean wake up. You’ve already slept thru your Saturday services. Sean, stop snoring! You’ll wake the twins, and I just got the little demons back to sleep. Mary, Thomas, and Jo go back to school tomorrow. Your snoring will bring the whole house down on me.
SEAN: I don’t snore … not asleep, zzzagh, just resting my … Snnnaugh, aaah, snort.
MOIRA: Sean, stop snoring! You’re enough to wake the dead.
SEAN: Lucky dead, blessed dead, zzzz.
MOIRA: Sean WAKE UP!
SEAN: Oh what! Can’t a man get a little rest in his own home?
MOIRA: You don’t love me anymore, Sean. You used to help me with the dishes and putting the children to bed.
SEAN: (MUTTERING) There didn’t used to be so many dishes. Or small vermin. (RAISING HIS VOICE) Of course I love you, Misses Q. I’m just tired after a hard day’s work out in the rain. (NODS BACK TO SLEEP.) Zzzzz
MOIRA: (LOUDLY) Sean you spend every afternoon down at the Thirsty Fisherman. Father Dolan says it’s a blight on the parish. He calls it the ‘Home Wrecker.’
SEAN: (SOTTO VOCE) He’s the blight on the parish, the prissy old gossip. Just mad because they barred him for not paying his bar tic.
MOIRA: John, I heard that! You should be ashamed of yourself; the way you talk about a man of God.
SEAN: Why not, he talks that way about me. You should find yourself a better class of tattletale.
MOIRA: Sean, you’ll burn in hell for the way you talk about Father Dolan.
SEAN: I’d get a better night’s rest in hell and wouldn’t have him spying on me.
MOIRA: Father Dolan is a very devout man, Sean. He married us.
SEAN: I rest my case.
MOIRA: You don’t love me, Sean. Who’s Tina? I heard you talking about her in your sleep.
SEAN: A man can’t be responsible for what he says in his sleep. Tina’s the Donovan girl, her mother Jenny inherited the Fisherman when old Mick Donovan got gored by Billy Tra’s bull. Jenny’s a lucky girl. Can’t say the same for Mick.
MOIRA: That woman! I saw your tractor parked up behind her bar just this afternoon. And that Tina’s young enough to be your daughter.
SEAN: (MUTTERING) Might be. Man’s got no privacy. (SPEAKING UP) She’s just a schoolgirl, love. I stopped by the bar for a bite and to warm my wet bones before I jumped back on the tractor.
MOIRA: Is that what you call it nowadays? Father Dolan says the tractor isn’t all you’ve been after jumpin’ on, Sean Quirke!
SEAN: Moira! Hold your tongue. Dolan’s the very devil on a push bike. Give me some peace.
MOIRA: Sean I think you’d love me better if I dressed up in a whisky label and put a cork in my mouth.
SEAN: (SOTTO VOCE) You’re half right there. (SPEAKING UP) Don’t be so hard on me, hen. You know I love you.
MOIRA: Mother’s coming round for Sunday supper tomorrow after mass and Sean you keep a civil tongue in your head.
SEAN: (SOTTO VOCE) Oh Jesus, I’d be better off dead. (FULL VOICE). Maybe I can borrow Billy Tra’s bull for an hour or two, introduce him to herself. I’ll just nip out when she arrives.
MOIRA: Sean, if you go out tomorrow, be sure to pick up a can of beans and a loaf of half-pan because that’s what you’ll be havin’ for supper.
SEAN: Oh all right, but woman give me some room to breathe. Your mother’s a harpy, drove your da to an early grave.
MOIRA: You come on, Sean, you can be nicer to my mother. She’s getting on and we’re all the family she has left.
SEAN: All she hasn’t murdered. Like Bonnie & Clyde visiting her ol’ mum. Does the condemned man get a last wish?
MOIRA: What now?
SEAN: Pour yourself a glass of minerals and bring me a wee wedge of that leftover apple crumble. Come on girl, sit down here and give us a kiss and a cuddle.
MOIRA: Oh alright. I might as well, there’s nothing on telly.
(NOISE OF TWINS FUSSING AS HIGH CHAPARRAL THEME FADES IN THEN OUT. EPISODE CONCLUDES)
