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Awkward scenes and animal cruelty as Love/Hate returns

6 Oct 2014

Nidge from the first episode of the fifth season of Love/Hate. Image: RTÉ.

The RTÉ crime drama Love/Hate finally made its return to Irish screens in its final season and viewers flocked to Twitter in their droves to talk about it.

It had been almost a year since we last saw Nidge, Fran, Elmo and co on Irish TV but as always the level of intensity and unbelievable awkwardness shared among households was felt as we saw some new additions to the show, the exit of others and even the return of animal cruelty, well, sort of.

The major challenge the series had to face was overcoming season four which, in many critics’ minds, was something of a disappointment compared with what had come before it, but from people’s reactions on Twitter, it was long-awaited.

While some people struggle with the violence and ramping up of intensity of the show, some people find it as much of a challenge to get past the strong Dublin accents.

This season also saw the addition of a new character, Paulie, who is yet another victim of the small pool of actors that exist in the Irish acting industry as viewers noticed that actor Johnny Ward has been in one or two Irish advertising campaigns…

Younger viewers meanwhile were probably too moritified to have noticed after being subjected to the incredibly awkward ‘romantic’ scene between Nidge and Janet.

Older people just found it to be a perfect representation of Irish life.

And finally, eagle-eyed viewers may have noticed the inclusion of a disclaimer in the credits of last night’s show saying that no animals were harmed in the making of the show which, of course, was a reference to viewer uproar following the killing of a cat and swan in two seperate episodes during its history. But some couldn’t help notice that they were slightly wrong in their statement given Warren’s case of the nits.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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