[QUOTE=“Il Bomber Destro, post: 946710, member: 2533”]Red Hand Lights
A teen sports drama set in rural Tyrone following the trials and tribulations of a Tyrone club minor football team. The show will follow the lives of members of the team and how they handle the pressures of winning a county minor title, their dreams of getting a call up to the county team, the expectancy from a demanding local community, doing their A-levels and avoiding the possible perils that exist out there - gambling addiction, gay porn, loyalist dog fighting rings and parent murder. Zac Efron stars as Rory (the show’s protagonist) - a popular and handsome young man whose father Tommy is a former county star, but all is not as it rosy and it seems on the outside and Rory and his teammates must overcome some major obstacles to keep chugging along and achieve all their ambitions.[/QUOTE]
Episode 1 ends with the team’s star player, and main character of the episode, being killed in a match. During the rest of the series Coach Mike Hart rallies the team to reach that year’s final, where they lose.
Series 2 ends with them winning the title after the local town has been blown up by a bomb.
After a break of a few years Series 3 airs. The boys have grown into men and go for the big title - The All-Irish State Championship. A teacher from the local school, Mr. Cannavaro, who was a peripheral character in Series 1 and 2 now assumes a more central role - he’s now on the same team as his former pupils. He ends up getting injured before the Bowl Championship game, but plays anyway. He limps off injured, but in a final dramatic twist, ends up heroically coming back on in the final few minutes of the game, and lifts the trophy.
Series 4 starts with the death of one of one our beloved central characters from the first three series. Coach Hart is booed by the team’s supporters for picking his son. Set over two years, the team goes through the depths of despair before coming back to reclaim their title. The writing in the series finale is criticised for repeating the storyline of the finale of Series 3 where Mr. Cannavaro heroically comes back on for the last few minutes of the final - in fact this time he scores the winning goal. This is Mr. Cannavaro’s final appearance in the show (the actor who plays him leaves to pursue a career on British TV).
Series 5 is similar, but without any deaths this time, although many central characters suffer serious injury. A previously central character in the show who hasn’t been seen so far in the series returns for the finale. Commonly thought to be the dullest series so far, but it did have the redeeming feature of the dog fighting. Nevertheless ratings have started to slip at this point.
In a desperate effort to reclaim lost ratings, series 6 sees things start getting really bizarre and the writers are criticised for far-fetched storylines, such as the murder of Coach Hart’s daughter, Coach Hart becoming a deeply dislikeable character and getting involved with various right-wing political causes, the aforementioned murder by one of the players of his father, the gambling addiction of one of the players, Coach Hart and star player Shaun O’Cavani becoming embroiled in a row with a major TV network. and of course the gay porn, a storyline which is savaged by TV critics and eventually sees the series cancelled.
