“Borgen” and Irish politics.

I’m currently watching a box set of Danish political drama “Borgen”, which tells the story of fictional Danish PM Birgitte Nyborg Christensen. It lacks the charm of “The West Wing” but is curiously watchable, especially from the perspective of a small European country well used to coalition politics.

Watching it made me wonder about how RTE could do such a show. It is not an impossible proposition, but there would be considerable barriers against it. The biggest single one I feel would be the tendency of Irish dramatists to always paint powerful people as inherently corrupt or evil. I’m not sure I would want to watch a show like that, about a crowd of bastards being bastards.

That means that such a show would instead have to be about good leaders doing good things, which would mean a show that actually debated real politics and real political choices. Would the Irish people watch a show like that?

Rather than “The West Wing”, would an Irish political drama not focus instead on some crowd of victims being f**ked over by some powerful bloke in a Louis Copeland suit?