Nathan Quinn O'Rawe plays Mick, a 15-year-old Belfast schoolboy who finds a lump on his left testicle and swears his mates, his new girlfriend Rachael (Jessica Reynolds) and his overworked mother Patricia (Sinéad Keenan) to silence. Shot around St Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, the Strand Cinema and Ormeau Road, the three half-hour instalments chart the weeks between discovery and ultrasound result, catching house-parties, first dates, playground rumours and a drunken cancer confession in 24-32 tight minutes.
Writers Michael Patrick and Oisín Kearney first staged the story as a one-man play at Dublin Fringe 2017, rewrote it inside BBC Writers’ Room Belfast Voices, then kept the monologue candour intact for the screen. Director Paul Gay keeps the colour palette grey-blue Belfast winter, letting the jokes about home-made cures and erect “pocket pat” checks land harder against the real fear of losing a parent and possibly a ball.
BBC Three dumped all three episodes onto iPlayer on 1 March 2020; weekly BBC One transmissions followed. The Royal Television Society handed the show Best Drama in both Northern Ireland (2020) and Yorkshire (2021), plus acting and writing prizes for the newcomers, while reviewers parked it somewhere between The Inbetweeners and Derry Girls and called it “charmingly funny and strangely sincere”.
Production Details
BBC Three / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2020
Created by: Michael Patrick Oisín Kearney
Showrunner(s): Tommy Bulfin, Kay Mellor
Writer(s): Michael Patrick, Oisín Kearney
Producer(s): Sian Palfrey
Main Cast
Nathan Quinn O'Rawe as Michael "Mick" Campbell
Oliver Anthony as Tommy
Jessica Reynolds as Rachael
Odhran Carlin as Finn, Mick's brother
Roger Thomson as Dr Gibbon, Mick's GP
Sinéad Keenan as Patricia Campbell, Mick's mother
Levi O'Sullivan as Conor
Sade Malone as Siobhan
Lola Petticrew as Lucy, Mick's sister
Jay Duffy as Danny
Brian Milligan as Jimmy Campbell, Mick's dead father
Gerard Jordan as Tommy's father
