'These Sacred Vows' Cristina-Rios The opening of These Sacred Vows feels like The White Lotus — brought to you by Ryanair.
Instead of a swanky resort in Hawaii, Scilly or Thailand, the new Irish series, which screened at international TV festival Series Mania this week, opens on a trashed rent-a-villa, somewhere on Tenerife. The sun shines on the empty wine bottles and related detritus of last night’s debauched party. In the pool, a priest is floating face down. Dead.
Rewind to a week earlier. It’s a destination wedding. The priest has been flown in to officiate the ceremony and is being lodged with the friends of the bride. Amidst the drunk, half-naked and lascivious troupe, Father Vincent O’Keeffe, in his dark black suit and pasty bald pate, strikes an incongruous figure. The mystery of how the priest ended up in the pool is, we’re told in voice over by the dead man himself, played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, will be solved over the next six episodes.
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We are quickly introduced to a host of potential suspects, including the parents of the bride, Jerry and Sandra (Jason O’Mara and Justine Mitchell), the Molly-popping DJ Glen (Shane Daniel Byrne), and Cormac (Adam John Richardson), a teacher with some suspicious physical injuries. Each one, we discover, is hiding a dark secret.
The stage is set for a cosy crime comedy, an Irish Death in Paradise. But These Sacred Vows creator John Butler has something else in mind, using the engine of a mystery to tell a much bigger story, one that touches on queer identity, community and the place of religious faith in a secular society.
“It is a cosy crime opener, there is a coziness to a body in a pool,” says Butler, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Series Mania TV Festival in Lille, where These Sacred Vows is screening as part of the International Panorama program. “I hope that will draw people in, and then from there, I can start making bolder moves [to tell a story about ] class and gender and sexuality and religion. It felt like a nice bait and switch. It’s a murder mystery but there’s also these other things going on.”
Don’t be fooled by all that Spanish sunshine. These Sacred Vows is a deeply Irish tale about sin and redemption, with the role of the Catholic Church still front and center. Every one of the characters is having a crisis of faith. For Cormac, an openly gay teacher at a posh Catholic school, his faith is shaken by a violent incident of homophobia.
Richardson says the role of Cormac, an out Irish gay man who is a practicing Catholic, was a revelation.
“It’s almost assumed [in Ireland] that to be gay, you have to sacrifice your faith,” says Richardson. “I was pretty much assumed to not be religious the second I came out of the closet. But I have gay religious friends, you know, practicing Catholics, and to have a character like this in a modern day Irish fable was really exciting for me.”
“The show, speaking generally, is about the impossibility of binary definition. So queer Catholics, a good women with an STD, a mother of the bride who feels young and artistic,” adds Butler. “It’s impossible, in Ireland in 2026, to be just one thing. This is what it is to be truly Irish today. Ireland is queer, multicultural, male and female, young and old, altogether.”
A decade ago, says Butler, a series like his “would never have gotten onto the desk of a commissioner.” But Irish TV is having a moment. The success of series like Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters, Netflix’s How to Get to Heaven From Belfast and the BBC’s Blue Lights has boosted the profile — and international sales potential — of shows from the Emerald Isle.
“It’s an amazing moment for Irish TV. The stories that we’re exporting are very specifically Irish and that seems to be a reason for their success,” says Butler. “When I look at people like [Bad Sisters creator] Sharon Horgan, who’s a hero of mine as well as a mate, that’s the North Star. I think there’s a confidence in the storytelling [and] an absolute specificity, an Irishness, at the center of it.”
These Sacred Vows was produced by Dublin-based Treasure Entertainment for Irish public broadcaster RTÉ. Banijay Rights is handling international sales. The show has been picked up by streaming service Binge for Australia. It is still seeking a U.S. buyer.
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