Window into the underworld of Dublin’s mean streets

Watching Love/Hate should be approached in the same way that Wayne and Lizzie watch Nidge – there’s no need to go rushing at things. Which is why we’ve waited four weeks into the new series to proclaim what most viewers already know – it just gets better and better every year.

It might be the fact that there are comedic elements in the midst of such vicious brutality; it could be the incredibly strong, rounded characters at its core – or it might just be that it is the most realistic drama on the box anywhere at the minute.

God be with the days that Sunday nights were for The Riordans or for Dinny and Miley in Glenroe – now it’s the mean streets of Dublin’s inner city and a world that, thankfully, most of us know nothing about.

But those who do – the Gardaí, the tabloid hacks, the callers to Liveline – tell us that this is life as it truly is, down among the deadbeats, the druggies and the gangsters who crawl out from under their urban rocks.

When we first encountered Love/Hate it was all about John Boy and Darren; it was all too styled and pretty and frankly unbelievable as a gritty drama. It was style over substance and the biggest crimes we witnessed were crimes against fashion.

That’s not something you’d throw at it now – and it’s not just the storylines or the realism that hook you; it’s the depth of character that allows you to see the softer side to a scumbag like Nidge, or to laugh along with Fran, who might well be the most malevolent man on the box.

It’s also the fact that Love/Hate isn’t just an hour about criminality – we’ve seen Nidge’s mother die on the eve of his own little lad’s first Holy Communion.

We’ve seen a superlative acting performance from Killian Scott as the brain-damaged Tommy – damaged, it should be said, because Nidge beat him within an inch of his life with a golf club – as he proves the weakest link in the tiger kidnap gang by returning to the scene of the crime.

He’s also singlehandedly restored the economic fortunes of fizzy orange.

This year we’ve finally seen the cops – as Moynihan and his gang deploy an unorthodox approach to flushing out Dublin’s drugs vermin, not least by trying to split the gang by putting pressure on Tommy and then setting up Elmo as a rat … by spraying graffiti on the wall of his flat block.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.