The Producers Of Kin Are Back With A New Crime Drama

The creator of iconic Irish crime drama Love/Hate is back with a new dark comedy – and the BBC has teamed up with Irish broadcaster RTÉ to commission not one but two series. Here’s everything we know so far about Tall Tales & Murder.

Tall Tales & Murder: Plot, Cast, Release Date & More

Stuart Carolan wrote two episodes of Netflix’s The Gentlemen – but he’s undoubtedly best known for creating and writing Love/Hate, which ran from 2010 to 2014 and starred a stellar cast of Irish talent: Robert Sheehan, Aiden Gillan, Brian Gleeson, Tom Vaughan-Lawlor and plenty more. The black comedy, one of Ireland’s most critically acclaimed and successful dramas ever produced, delved into the underbelly of the criminal sphere, which seems to be Carolan’s bread and butter.

Teaming up with double Emmy winner Chris Addison (who has worked on Veep, Breeders, The Thick of It and more), Carolan’s brand new series, officially commissioned by BBC Northern Ireland and RTÉ for an initial two six-part series, is another darkly comedic crime drama, which Addison describes as a ‘delicious screwball drama’. Chris calls working with Addison ‘incredible fun’, adding he has been a fan of the ‘brilliant’ writer ‘since The Thick of It’ and describing Tall Tales & Murder as an ‘insane story’.

Director and executive producer Addison added he is ‘frankly giddy with delight to get to team up with the twisted and highly original mind of Stuart Carolan to create this show’.

What Is It About?

Tall Tales & Murder is based on Caimh McDonnell’s Dublin Trilogy – which is ironically made up of eight novels. We haven’t been told which book Tall Tales & Murder will be based on in particular, but Addison says, ‘we’ve taken Caimh’s wonderful novel as a jumping off point, and ended up with what I like to think of as a dark and delicious screwball drama.’

The first book in McDonnell’s series is A Man With One of Those Faces (2016). The synopsis is as follows:

The first time somebody tried to kill him was an accident.

The second time was deliberate.

Now Paul Mulchrone finds himself on the run with nobody to turn to except a nurse who has read one-too-many crime novels and a renegade copper with a penchant for violence. Together they must solve one of the most notorious crimes in Irish history…

…or else they’ll be history.

BBC Northern Ireland’s head of content commissioning Eddie Doyle describes Tall Tales & Murder as ‘storytelling at its darkest, funniest and most surreal’, adding he is ‘looking forward to bringing audiences with us on this wild and thrilling ride’.

The Cast Of Tall Tales & Murder

Black Doves scene stealer and Fifteen-Love lead Ella Lily Hyland will lead Tall Tales & Murder, joined by Aidan Gillen, who starred in Love/Hate and Kin as well as garnering fans across the globe for his turn as Little Finger in Game of Thrones. They’ll be joined by fellow Irish stars Philippa Dunne (Amandaland, Derry Girls, The Woman in the Wall) and Packy Lee (Peaky Blinders).

Release Date

Tall Tales & Murder series 1 is slated to launch in 2026. Filming will begin this week in the Republic of Ireland.

Series one will be made up of six episodes, and the series has already been renewed for a second six-part series.