Big Wow Wow

A new Irish TV drama is being panned by critics for being too cliche (it’s TV!). Not so, says the Observer’s Henry McDonald

Don’t expect to see ol’ Barney, with his wizened face, his beard matted with crumbs of Brennan’s bread and a permanent froth line of porter above his upper lip while propping up the bar and giving us all a bit of craic in The Big Bow Wow – the name of the club where the main characters of the drama congregate after work. Instead we have an ambitious, ballsy Arab- Irish girl who eschews the hijab, has a secret affair with her university tutor and whose hero is yet another European hybrid of cross-culture and multi-ethnicity, Zinedine Zidane.