The Past Is Present: Copper Returns

By Gwen Orel

"No Irish Need Apply."

The cartoons of Thomas Nast depicting the Irish as the missing link between ape and human.

There wasn't much of that ugliness in the last year's debut season of BBC America's "Copper." The Irish and Irish-American detectives were handsome, and there was authentic Irish music from Joanie Madden and John Whelan, all put together by Brian Keane, but the degree of anti-Irish bigotry in 1864, not even 20 years after the Famine, was profound.

We'll see more of the Irish experience this year, thanks in large part to Executive Producer Thomas Kelly, and to actor Kevin Ryan.

The Civil War-era drama set in the Five Points began its second season on Sunday, June 23. Once again, the show will center on detective Tom Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones), in the violent area of Five Points, NYC, during the Civil War era. Now it's 1865, and the war is on its last legs. Last season, Corcoran sought to find his missing wife Ellen (Alex Paxton-Beesley), while going after criminals, always accompanied by his pal, Detective Francis Maguire (Kevin Ryan). In the final episode of the series, we learned that Ellen was not dead, but in an asylum, and that she had betrayed him with Maguire.

We'll deal with the fall-out from those events this season, and also with a the political intrigues of Tammany Hall, with Ward Leader, General Brendan Donovan (Donal Logue). We'll also continue to see the African-American Dr. Matthew Freeman (Ato Essandoh), who is an excellent forensic scientist (think "Quincy Adams, M.D., Civil War era") and his wife Sara (Tess Thompson), and follow the life of Elizabeth Haverford (Anstasia Griffith), an English widow who was involved with Corcoran before letting him down. New this year will be Hattie Lemaster, a character played by award-winning actress Alfre Woodard (Steel Magnolias), playing Sara's mother, and Eamonn Walker as the abolitionist leader Frederick Douglas.

Kelly, who has written for "Blue Bloods," and whose 2005 novel "Empire Rising," about the construction of the Empire State Building, was not only a New York Times notable book but was also a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin literary award, brings some of his own and his family history to the show. His family hails from Cavan and Cork, he said.

Before he became a writer, Kelly worked in construction. He was a "sandhog," one of the guys that dig the tunnels, he said, part of a big Irish union.

"I came from a blue collar family, but I always loved to read," Kelly said. While he thought he might want to write a book one day, this was "nothing you could say out loud, because somebody would hit you."

AMERICAN DREAM

His father died when Kelly was only 20, and told him, "Don't be like me, get an education." He studied economics and received a master's in public administration, because, he said, "You didn't go to college but to get a better job." But after graduation, he began writing his book. He fell into television, he said, when a book that had been optioned by ABC had the screenwriter turn in an "abysmal" script.

"I decided to write my own version. I called a buddy who had a screenwriting program, and 48 hours later I turned in my script, and that's how I got into television," Kelly said.

You can see that enterprising spirit in the Irish characters on "Copper." Kelly said that when he watched the show last season, he thought that the show had a missed opportunity in portraying the Irish history. "I told Tom [Fontana], who's Sicilian, 'You missed the Irish side of things. I really wanted to tell thst story of being the other, immigrant, and Catholic, which was so reviled at the time. For the Irish, who'd escaped the horrors of the Famine, Five Points was a bastard creation of the potato famine. That was never alluded to in the first season. I said, 'Tom, I'm going to bring that flavor in.'"

Kevin Ryan, who plays Maguire, said, "During the Famine, it was advertised that America is a sweeter country, a better place, there's farming, land, culture, everything. I can see it today in the present times." That bit of hope was what brought him to America, he said. The Dubliner had been a breakdancer in Ireland, and voted one of Ireland's Sexiest Men, after working as a stonecutter in the family business.

"In the economic state of Ireland, there are a lot of people going through the school system that can't get jobs," Ryan said. "People have law degrees from Trinity College, and you see them working at 7-11. They go to the states.

"They are looking for a better life." In the time when "Copper" was set, the stakes were higher: "It was survival. There wasn't enough food to feed the family. You've got to get out of Ireland, or else you'd die."

Kelly said, "For me, it is a more global American story. This is 75 years after 'All men are created equal,' this great revolutionary idea, democracy, was still in its infancy as a human condition. By 1865, the practical limitations of this idea were literally being fought on the streets of New York City.

"Corcoran came as a boy. His whole thing is, he wants to be American. It's the beginning of the idea of the whole American dream. This year we overlaid the story of the Democratic party in Tammany, and how they made a deal with the Irish, 'If you vote for us on this day, we'll help you get jobs.'"

Co-creator and Executive Producer Tom Fontana stated in press notes that adding in a Boss Tweed-like character in General Brendan Donovan will "reveal a highly volatile faction of old New York City, Tammany Hall, and sink our characters into storylines including, counterfeiting, illegal Union Army recruitment, the 13th Amendment and its ratifications for 'freed' slaves, public health hazards and more."

IRISH HISTORY

It was important to ground the characters in their history, Kelly said. The decisions the characters make all have a correlation to their past.

In the first episode, Maguire is on death row for three murders. Ryan said he lost 26 pounds for the role, because in prison a person would be malnourished. "I wanted him very lean," Ryan said. The character has a "feral quality" to Ryan.

Kelly described a scene between Maguire and Detective Andrew O'Brien, a "narrowback," who was born here. Maguire, Kelly said, tried to leave during the famine but was turned away, and his sister died in his mother's arms. But Kelly wanted to show the other side too, the people over here who had to clean the "coffin ships."

O'Brien tells a story of how, when he was a boy, his father pointed to a clump of dead Irish people and said, "That's what the English did to our people."

Ryan said that he read a lot about the American Civil War, and visited tenement buildings, to become acquainted with the period, although, he said, "For me it's a present-day character because I'm in that role. You can never play a period or a time frame. You can only play your objective. Acting is bad acting. Living is great acting."

As the only actor from Ireland in the cast, Ryan said that he is "always" called upon as the resident expert in Irishness. One suggestion that he made was to have some of the Irish language in the script. "Myself and Donal Logue drop a few lines of Gaelic," Ryan said. "Initially it wasn't in the script, but we figured we'd communicate in Gaelic. We shot it both ways, and worked out that Gaelic at the end of the scene. It was kind of like the way Italians would communicate. It's just a wonderful moment. They have their own community."

In the time period, many of the Irish would have been native speakers, Kelly said.

Last season, he even got to do a little jig. This year we can look forward to Maguire singing a few older Irish songs.

But don't be fooled: Maguire is no pussycat. "I like that he has a nasty, bad-ass gangster side, and a very sweet heart," Ryan said. Maguire is someone you can root for, but "he is also a ruthless killer."

In that sense he's not unlike the late James Gandolfini, whose Tony Soprano was not a good person, but who had our sympathy, Ryan said.

CONNECTING TO HISTORY

Along with infusing the episodes with more Irish history, this season also departs from last season's police procedural structure. It's less about finding the clues to a murder, and more about the policemen taking steps to stop the criminals, Kelly said. There are longer story arcs that span several episodes, he said.

"Right now is the golden age of television," Kelly said. "There is a marketplace for scripted dramas." Some of them, like "The Borgias," "Game of Thrones," and even "Mad Men," take place in another place and time.

Five Points during the Civil War era is chaotic, close to uncivilized. What is the appeal? For one thing, Kelly said, we can make these dramas more convincing now, as computer graphics are better.

But more importantly, this is an uncertain time, he said. With the financial crisis, wars, terrorism, and the threat of change, Kelly said, "whenever that stuff is going on in the present, people look to connect in the past.

"It was horrible then, and things got better. It gives people some assurance there's a much bigger story.

"We made it this far."

"Copper" airs on BBC America on Sundays at 9 p.m. For more information, visit bbcamerica.com/copper

Gwen Orel runs the blog and podcast, New York Irish Arts