AFTER seven series of delving into divisive Irish history on the radio, Tim McGarry and Dr David Hume are now bringing The Long and The Short of It to television.
The format finds the towering north Belfast comedian and his less vertically intrusive east Antrim-bred friend investigating key moments and figures from throughout Irish history by consulting a variety of well-informed experts, complete with silly-skewing historic re-enactments – voiced by McGarry and his Hole in The Wall Gang chums – to help illustrate momentous moments in a comedic manner.
For the new four-part BBC Northern Ireland TV version, these latter segments have evolved into full-on animations featuring vivid, Simpsons-esque visuals courtesy of Belfast-based Hola Lola Animations.
We're delighted to team up with the mighty Hole In The Wall Gang to produce new animated sketches for their new TV...Posted by Hola Lola Animations on Thursday, August 24, 2023
"The cartoons work really, really well," enthuses McGarry of the new series, which begins airing weekly on Friday evening with all episodes available immediately via iPlayer.
"The animator we have, Joel Simon, is great – he's translated it all beautifully."
As ever, the series finds the unlikely duo approaching divisive matters like 'Was Lundy a traitor?', 'Would you have voted for The Act of Union?', 'Was the Larne gun-running justified?' and 'Michael Collins: hero or villain?' from their respective sides of the orange and green divide.
"TV is a lot more intensive than radio, obviously," comments the Give My Head Peace and Blame Game star of the challenges involved in translating the show from its original medium.
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Delighted to say that a four part series of The Long and the Short Of It will be on BBC1NI from 8th September. https://t.co/B3XLDNwc4e
— Tim Mc Garry (@Tim_Mc_Garry) August 23, 2023
"The radio version was fairly simple: David and I go out and have a chat to somebody for half-an-hour, and then the editor cuts it down. But obviously, for TV, you need the visuals as well, so that's where the animations come in - and in the Larne gun-running and Michael Collins episodes, there's actual archive footage as well.
"So we're really, really pleased and delighted after seven series to get it on the telly, because there is a market out there for it: there's always people who come up to me and go, 'I really like The Long and The Short of It – it's great', which is always very nice to hear."
Hume agrees: "It's really exciting to get to the TV stage, because now people can actually see the locations where history happened, which they might not have been aware of," enthuses the Ballycarry historian and author, a former director of services for the Orange Order.
"I think the format of it is really good, as it's not too academic – it's 'light history', effectively, but it gets you the basic elements of it all. And, with the comedy aspects, hopefully it's entertainment for people, even if history at school may not have been like that for them."
On the subject of school, one of the central conceits of The Long and The Short of It is that Hume and McGarry begin each episode by expressing their reliably oppositional viewpoints on the subject at hand – perspectives shaped by their respective upbringings and the wildly varied content of the history curriculum offered across our religiously segregated education system.
This is, of course, representative of the north as a whole, where each individual will have a different take on Irish history – or perhaps none at all – depending on where they grew up and where they went to school.
"I served on the Flags and Culture Commission, and at the public events in a lot of areas people would have said to me, 'We weren't taught Irish history, we don't know about it'," comments Hume.
"When you have that situation, you have people who are not confident, then, in terms of the history that they're hearing about.
"Also, people sometimes have a bad experience [with history] depending on who their teachers are at school. I was very fortunate to have a really good history teacher, and he sort of kindled the 'spark' of history with me.
"But even then, some of the subjects we've covered on the radio series, like the Famine, or Daniel O'Connell, and now Michael Collins on the TV series, they wouldn't have been on my radar when I was at school. So I think it's very important to try and get [this history] out to people."
"I don't think there's any other history programme that tackles history from two different perspectives," offers McGarry, who is a vocal proponent of integrated education.
"You have two people coming from different sides of the northern fence, with different educational experiences. The Irish history I was taught in school was very much from a nationalist perspective, where it was the Famine and Cromwell and Home Rule, and the Prods were always the bad guys.
"I know a lot of Protestants who didn't learn Irish history at all – [for them] history was all about the Tudors and this that and the other. But there were also whole tranches of Irish history that I didn't know much about, like our long connection with Scotland, for example.
"So we start off by saying OK, there's two different perspectives here: let's see what the facts are, talk to some experts and have a bit of a row about it – and we do have proper rows. We're two very different people but we both have a passion for history, a love of history and we also respect each other."
Which begs the question: has either man ever managed to shift the other's point of view?
"I don't think so," admits Hume, "though Tim claims he 'wins' them all, of course."
"Well, we did a debate on Lundy with the Apprentice Boys of Derry at the Maiden City Festival a few weeks ago, and by the end I'd actually managed to convince several of their members that Lundy was probably an innocent man and shouldn't really be burnt every year," the Hole In The Wall Gang leader proudly reveals.
"But I've definitely learned quite a lot from David over the past lot of years. I have a bit more respect for the unionist position where I can say, 'Actually, I can see where you're coming from'. I think there's been a few episodes like that.
"We did one on 'Was Home Rule "Rome rule"?' and why unionists were so opposed to Home Rule, and by the end I kind of went, 'Yeah, OK, I can start to see your point here' – it maybe wasn't just unionists being thran and difficult.
"None of our history is very simple and linear where one side is 'right' and one side is 'wrong'. That's just not how history works."
"Yes, there's all these nuances," agrees Hume.
"Where I come from, the curbstones are red, white and blue and there's a mural of King William on the wall – but equally, we had a very strong 1798 tradition, which I remember learning about at primary school.
"There was an old lady who was a local historian, and she would always talk about the martyr who was hanged in 1798.
"Even when you look at the Larne gun-running [of 1914], there's a fair chance that some of the ancestors of the Larne gun-runners were actually out in 1798 with the United Irishmen, so all of that is just fascinating stuff.
"I think that's what we want, to put people in the situation where they start to question the history that they think they know. That's very, very important."
The Long and The Short of It starts on BBC One Northern Ireland on Friday September 8 at 7.30pm, after which all four episodes will become available via BBC iPlayer.
