Making the move from museum to murder!

Eithne Verling was watching a scene from the new RTÉ/ITV crime thriller being filmed in a Conamara bog when she found tears running down her face. Because the actors before her eyes were bringing her characters to life, investing themselves in a story she had worked on at night and at weekends while running Galway City Museum.

“I was so moved by the commitment of the actors to the characters,” she says.

For someone who had once written two books and put them in a drawer without showing anybody, it was an extraordinary place to find herself.

Now The Galway Bay Murders, her first television drama, is heading for RTÉ and ITV. The six-part thriller stars Star Trek: Voyager and Orange Is the New Black actress Kate Mulgrew alongside Colm Meaney and John Connors.

Mulgrew plays Nora Savage, a New York detective drawn into a Galway murder investigation involving a female climate activist.

“There is nobody more surprised than myself,” Verling says.

She grew up in what she calls a 'delightfully eccentric' home, where art, music and ideas were part of everyday life. Her father, painter Walter Verling, and mother Louise, a musician, were both educators. They welcomed people who needed somewhere to stay. Looking back, she and her siblings counted 24 people who had lived with the family during their childhood.

Her mother loved exploring ideas; her father’s fascination with history helped draw her towards archaeology. Their empathy also influenced the writer she became.

Verling’s contribution to Galway’s cultural life began long before she became city museum director in 2013. She worked on the Galway Archaeological Survey and, as project manager with Galway Theatre Trust, helped develop the Town Hall and Black Box theatres.

Her career also included curating Donegal County Museum and eight years as Museums and Archives Officer with the Heritage Council.

She wrote poems and stories as a child, then stopped for years apart from professional writing. About 15 years ago, the urge returned.

She wrote a book and put it in a drawer. Then she wrote another and put that away too. A chapter eventually became a play.

Verling and Mulgrew met at a dinner in Oughterard. She and her husband, Galway International Arts Festival chairman John Crumlish, had been asked whether they might befriend the actress, who was coming to Galway to work on a memoir.

When Mulgrew opened the door, the connection was immediate.

“I don’t know what happened. It was just like we just fell for each other,” Verling recalls.

Later, at a dinner in Verling’s home, a friend revealed her writing. Mulgrew read the play and wanted to perform in it. Their efforts to get it staged came to nothing, but her encouragement stayed with Verling.

The television idea emerged during a painful period. Verling’s oldest brother had died, a loss she describes as “really awfully sad”.

Hoping to cheer her up, Crumlish brought her to New York, where an Enda Walsh production was being staged at St Ann’s Warehouse.

Over dinner with Mulgrew, conversation turned to the shortage of good parts for women beyond a certain age. Verling mentioned a thriller idea, suggesting her friend might appear in it.

Mulgrew encouraged her to write something and send it on. That early work dates to 2018. Initially set in New York, the story reached Mulgrew’s agent Jonathan Arun and then Stephen Wright of Two Cities Television.

New to screenwriting, Verling taught herself the craft by downloading scripts from Happy Valley and studying how Sally Wainwright put them together.

Wright did not proceed with that version. Instead, they developed a political thriller during 2019, before Covid interrupted its progress.

During the pandemic, Verling returned to the original story and moved it to Conamara.

She lives in Spiddal and spent four childhood years in Carraroe, where her family also kept a seaside cottage for many years. The language, landscape and people mattered deeply to her.

“I want to write about where I live and what’s important to me,” she recalls thinking.

She continued writing around her museum work. A revised pilot led to RTÉ’s involvement, writers’ rooms and the production partnerships that brought the series to screen.

As the series moved towards production, Verling left her role as Galway City Museum director to commit to the drama. It was a decision she had tried hard to avoid. “I loved my job,” she says.

Having helped secure funding for the museum’s planned extension, she was especially reluctant to leave that project behind. “It was my baby.”

Her work with the Traveller community, through the museum, also shaped the characters she wanted to put on screen. One of her central characters would be a Traveller detective, Eddie McDonagh.

John Connors joined the writers’ room, sharing his knowledge and perspective. Verling had imagined Eddie as a younger Garda and had not written the part for him. As they worked together, that changed. “He had to be Eddie.”

Climate change, young people’s hopes and the effects of greed and power also run through the series.

“I think young people are so heroic, genuinely,” she says.

An engaged climate activist herself, she wanted to acknowledge their commitment to sustainability while exploring how environmental ambitions can become entangled with money and control.

Her children, Tom, 28, Luke, 26, and Sorcha, 23, became informal sounding boards, helping with vocabulary and checking how younger characters might speak.

“They’re very proud and, you know, happy and all of that,” she says.

Her friendship with Mulgrew remains close. They speak regularly, and dinners at Verling’s home are still part of their relationship. A watch party there is a possibility when the series begins.

Already developing ideas for a potential second season, Verling has found an outlet for the restless curiosity she calls her “monkey mind”.

“I found something that really fits my brain,” she says.

For anyone with an urge to write or make something, her advice is to pay attention to it.

“That interest or that creative impetus is pure gold because it brings you into places that are totally unexpected.”

The Galway Bay Murders begins on Sunday, November 8, at 9.30pm on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player.