Chris O’Dowd is returning to our screens as both a writer and actor in new Sky Original, Small Town, Big Story.

Creating the fictional hamlet of Drumbán, Chris is hoping to bring small-town Ireland to the big screen, alongside folklore, storytelling and what happens when a Hollywood production invades your life.

This couldn’t be more apt for his character, Jack E. McCarthy, whose book I Am Celt is the story being adapted for the screen. Jack E. is a bit of a sketchy figure, albeit a charming one. If only you could trust anything he says.

Speaking ahead of the show’s release, Chris talks about his inspiration behind the story, what’s going on with his character, UFOs and bringing his small-town story to life in a big way.

I'd been looking for something to set in the northwest of Ireland. I'd previously shot in Boyle before with Moone Boy, and I always wanted to go back, but never got around to it. I suppose I was looking for a ‘Small Town’ story but this time I wanted to make somewhere up – ‘Drumbán’. Then a producer friend got in touch with me. They had been watching something I had written and had enjoyed it, so he asked me if I wanted to work together.

He was working in Northern Ireland when they were filming Game of Thrones, and we ruminated on the phone about what a fun story it would be, one about a small town and what it might look like after a big show production had left. That was the initial idea. Then in development I did a rewind and thought about what that town would look like beforehand too. I had also just reread a play called "The Visit" by Frederick Dürrenmatt. It's a complex revenge story which is an interesting journey for its lead character to go on. I wanted these two ideas meshed, those two elements, and then I thought it also needed a secret that characters could keep or not keep. That’s the part about aliens, which has always been a big part of my experiences in Boyle anyway.

Even when I created Moone Boy we had an episode about an alien – Boyle was the UFO capital of Europe. I feel the idea is all in those things together.

Initially, everything is fantastic for the residents. It's exciting; it's a bit of a buzz. Then eventually it’s “Argh they’re blocking my driveway again, not so fun is it!” The thing I would find funny on a personal level, when I was filming Moone Boy, I found that people from the town and passersby were walking around in their best clothes with more makeup on, just in case they would get caught by the cameras. It’s great. It feels a lot more authentic filming in places with character.

Small Town, Big Story is a series about this small town in rural Ireland where a big epic Hollywood style production comes to film. It’s about the ramifications that it has on the characters from the town. And a secret that two of those characters have been keeping for over 20 years since Millennium eve.

When I was thinking about a place to set Small Town, Big Story, I wanted to set it somewhere small that was more like a village. I imagined my mother's home which is ten miles or so outside of Boyle. I wrote about it imagining the configuration of streets and the river which runs through.

I had been working in Ireland up by the lakes and I had forgotten how beautiful they were. I thought they would be a beautiful place to set a show. I haven’t lived in Ireland for around 20 years and when you come back, you realise it’s going through this interesting cultural renaissance. The language is coming to the forefront, Irish unity is being talked about. There is a lot of mythological talk. It’s like a return to these innate qualities that we have lost in the last two to three centuries. You can see this in Irish writing all this century so far.

Whether it is writer Kevin Barry looking at fine lines between death and life, I think there's something in the alien draw of that writing. The artist Blindboy has a theory that folklore is somehow related to biodiversity. Where the land is trying to tell you stories so that we treat it better. I think there is a truth in that. So, there is a lot of myth that is woven into Small Town Big Story and we have ensured that it has some kind of basis in mythological fact.

The characters in the Hollywood film that rolls into town, ‘An Dagda’ and ‘Brigid’, are all real mythological beings. ‘An Dagda’ being this Irish mythological father-figure god of fertility and agriculture. As you see in the series, the film production messes them around for commercial value. It is an interesting thing to explore, this distant past and the future’s interpretation of it at the same time.

I find using music when writing very, very important. There is something very brassy about the idea of something coming from above. For Small Town, Big Story, I started looking into old Celtic instruments. There is one called the Celtic Carnyx, it’s this abnormally large instrument with a horn bow at the top shaped into an animal's head. The instrument is from two and a half thousand years ago. I suppose ancient flag bearers would have had this instrument making this terrifying sound. There are YouTube videos of people playing it at concerts. It seemed interesting to me to use these sounds and a brass or bronze instrument, and we use a lot of brass instruments in the show.

Our composer adorned a lot of scenes with these wonderful brass sections. I wanted all the instruments to feel like you could have it all on a spaceship, so there’s no fecking piano! There's a lot of music in the series as the show goes on which represents part of the characters’ journey. Irish music and the rhythm of that, it’s such a fun thing to go with. There has been a resurgence in it. There’s a nice melting of brass and Irish music. Paddy’s character Séamus plays a trombone in the show. Paddy and I both took trombone lessons. It was to make sure I knew what I was talking about!

The characters are going through an identity crisis… I wanted the town to be going through one as well, so I made it a border town. This is reflected in our leading couple played by Eileen and Paddy. One of the characters has a job in the British school system and the other in the Irish medical system. It’s this kind of merging of the two so you wouldn’t know where you were walking or where you are. It felt important to feel specific in its vagueness.

The place is deliberately confused. All the characters have these huge character changes as the story goes on. You can see them cross a bridge from one country to another, which really interested me. The small-town part of the story is based on a place where my mother grew up. I was familiar with the geography there but then I created Drumbán, where it’s all a bit dark and silly.

Séamus Proctor (Paddy Considine) is up on a pedestal as the local doctor and his journey is about being knocked off it. And it’s the person who knocks him off (Christina’s character) who he has made to feel bad in the past, and these two characters skirt around each other. Catherine, his wife, her identity was entirely changed because of something else that happened. Her identity changes by the end of the series - as do they as a couple. We have given everyone these big character arcs. We took four months to write it through that way, which is kind of cool because it means everyone has something to do.

I love ‘committee scenes’, anything with a bunch of people, which are a pain to shoot but so fun to watch. It means that we’ve got so much talent in the small-town scenes that you’ll just want to be with them all the time. I think people will really love these characters.

There are so many great actors, but the idea of Paddy came up and I got excited by that, so glad that he got onboard. I was on the phone to my misses in California, and she said, “You will never believe who was in the house today”. And I asked “Who?” and she said “Christina Hendricks!” They were talking about some Vintage clothes business.

I asked, “what she was like?” and thought ‘she’d be good in the show’! It went from there. She seemed perfect. We started off with the character of Wendy as a hometown girl but there was something nice about the idea that she was an Irish girl in America. I meet them all the time, the type of Irish Americans who sound like they have never been to Ireland but then they start talking in an Irish accent after ten minutes. I know people make a choice, and I thought her character would leave it behind.

She’s a fantastic actor, so comically adept. Then there is Eileen, I’m a massive fan. I’ve wanted to work with her for years. She plays Catherine wonderfully. We’ve got such a good cast.

I was trying to write a funny show that could sustain hour-long episodes. The narrative needed to be punchy and for me that meant trying to do less jokes but to make the jokes stronger. I remember writing the Moone Boy scripts. I always wanted to have 100 jokes per episode, which was four jokes per page. It's the kind of rhythm I was writing at.

This time I thought instead of writing so many jokes per page I tried to write better jokes. It meant the narrative had to be stronger. We hired funny people to do the funny lines and dramatic people to do the dramatic lines. We have actors in the series who have great comedic bones.

It was great. I hadn’t seen him in years. When we shot Moone Boy, he was only ten years old. He came in and auditioned, and he was fantastic. He was in my head when I was writing the series, because he was at the right age to play Sonny who is Séamus’ son, and he was just finishing education. But he's such a lovely actor and such a sweetheart.

This time, I spent less time hanging out with his mother (As he didn’t need a chaperone). She came to set a lot less now that he is in his twenties. Such a talented fella!

So, ‘I Am Celt’ is an epic fantasy type of film based on a fictitious book called ‘Am I Celt?’ written by ‘Dr Jack E McCarthy’. Wendy, as producer, decides to film in Drumbán because of its beautiful natural mountains and white ridges, so this sleepy town is invaded and infested by hundreds of trucks and production people.

Later in the series there is a very sad death but the removal from the undertakers is a pure delight. People will laugh.

I don’t know what he is. I’ve loved changing my identity. He is a character that is constantly hiccupping. I wanted to play someone who is a complete braggart. I love a little bullsh**ter, but you don’t find them anymore because people can be found out so quickly because of the internet. But guys that just lie about everything – it’s quite an American trait, which is what Jack E is. He really just wants people to feel good.

I’m hoping the alien storyline will feel allegorical for the overall mad traumas that everyone is going through. Some people are dealing with characters who are the detritus of trauma. For example, the character Shelly is having to deal with her dad’s trauma. People will find it true to modern life, you can see these types of things happen and play out in the community.

The alien thing is a way of doing it without it being really depressing. We live in a world where we question what is true and what is not.

When I started to write, I was putting together all these ideas. I suppose thematically, ‘identity’ and all those things are in there. When I was writing it, it was the build up to the US congressional hearings on UFO sightings. It came and went, and no one really cared. A lot of the evidence in the hearings included things like ‘we think they are here…’ it was all very mad. But it just came and went. No one seems to care anymore.

I think aliens are fun. They work as you can be the most trustworthy person in the village, aka Séamus, and he is going to tell you the most unlikely thing.

I think people are going to really enjoy it. I think people will enjoy Paddy and Christina hitting it off, Eileen Walsh being glorious, the cast of terrific young actors, and the beautiful rolling hills of western Ireland with some great jokes... just come along.