ANYONE FOR DENNIS? (SMOTHER, SERIES ONE)

If you think your family's dysfunctional, you clearly haven't seen 'Smother'.

Season one of RTE and Alibi's six part Irish thriller gives us the Aherns - a well to do Co Clare family who are more dodgy than a bargain du jour from Del Boy.

Kate O'Riordan's characters are so corrupt and conniving, you're convinced you might need a solicitor for spending an hour in their company after each episode.

At the heart of O'Riordain and director Daithi Keane's thriller lies a murder mystery.

At the beginning of their tale, Stuart Graham's property developer Dennis Ahern stands on the edge of a cliff late at night.

A car pulls up with its headlights beaming, forcing Dennis to screw up his face.

There's a scuffle and then Dennis plunges to his death on the rocks below.

We then go back in time to speculate why Dennis was murdered.

O'Riordain and Keane take us to a family party for Dennis' wife, Dervla Kirwan's Val.

The party in their plush home is a simmering pot of passive aggression and envy.

Enjoying his role as a larger than life host, Dennis goes all in as the resident gobshite by deciding to create an almighty stink with the sudden announcement that he and Val are going to separate amicably.

This will free her to live with her lover, Thomas Levin's Danish schoolteacher Carl Jensen - with Dennis' apparent blessing.

This revelation comes as a shock, however, to his daughters and grandchildren - particularly Seana Kerslake's emotionally fragile Grace.

Minutes before, she has suffered the crushing blow of realising her former boyfriend, Eanna Hardwicke's Garda Joe Ryan is now in a relationship with her best friend, Ayoola Smart's Cathy Cregan.

Grace reacts hysterically to the news of Val and Dennis' break-up and, after driving all the guests out of the party, she bolts off into the night.

As the guests leave, Dennis appears to magnanimously shake Carl's hand but then threatens him that in return for taking his wife, he's got a thunderstorm of bad news heading his way.

Reeling from the abrupt end to the party and Grace's disappearance, the Aherns are then hit with the news of Dennis' death.

While Grace is eventually located in the house of Conor Mullen's Uncle Frank, it becomes clear that Michael Patric's Sergeant Paudie Manning is particularly interested in her whereabouts after the party.

Grace has stopped taking her medication which gives cause for concern.

However as the series wears on, other family members and associates start to come into the frame as possible suspects.

But if they are to catch the killer, a lot hinges on whether Dennis' autopsy indicates foul play.

Frank becomes one of the suspects after it emerges he discovered Dennis' dodgiest dealings.

It emerges Dennis had tried to sell Grace's cafe behind her back and he also left his pregnant stepdaughter, Niamh Walsh's Jenny in the lurch by getting her to invest in his failing property business.

This saddles her with a debt that she is desperate to get out of.

Frank's decision to alert the planning authorities to Dennis' corruption, however, was discovered by his brother.

Dennis' daughter Gemma-Leah Devereux's Anna is in a relationship with Lochlann O'Mearain's hot headed Rory Dwyer and also lives with his two sons, James O'Donnoghue's sullen teen Callum and Elijah O'Sullivan's sweet natured Jacob.

Anna is eager to have official guardianship of the boys but standing in their way is Rory's estranged wife Justine Mitchell's Elaine Lynch.

Rory left Elaine because of her alcoholism and a fire that endangered their children's lives.

Like Rory, Callum is prone to flashes of temper and is particularly bitter towards his father.

However it emerges he also went AWOL from the family home on the night of Dennis' death.

If that wasn't enough, we discover Dennis was a prolific womaniser throughout his marriage to Val, which makes his indignation towards Carl all the more hypocritical.

As each family member is revealed as a potential suspect, Val races about Co Clare two steps ahead of the Guards in a bid to limit the damage to the Aherns.

But can she save a family mired in scandal?

A cross between a murder mystery and a family relationship drama, 'Smother' begins really well - thriving on the passive aggression and simmering tension of the Aherns' family party.

But after an excellent opening episode, it's all downhill from there.

Great thrillers like the first series of 'Broadchurch' know how to sustain their murder mystery by carefully managing their many multi-stranded narratives.

With a large cast of characters, each revelation should shed light on the mystery.

Each clue should feel like the peeling of an onion.

Season one of 'Smother' doesn't peel the onion.

It just chops it up with a butchers' knife and expects us to eat the onion peel as well.

Having set up its central mystery, O'Riordan and her team of writers Tom Farrelly, Daniel Cullen and Ursula Rani Sarma overload the show with skulduggery to the point where it very quickly beggars belief.

Dennis has shafted so many people - family, friends and customers - he makes JR Ewing look like the Dalai Lama.

The Garda investigation into his death is so inept, we're reduced to watching Kirwan's Val racing around Co Clare in her fancy car, piecing together possible motives.

Kirwan is an assured screen presence but even she seems exhausted by the many rabbit holes she and the audience have to endure.

Kerslake too is one of Ireland's most exciting acting talents but after a blistering start, her skills are wasted on a part that is reduced to mostly ranting and raging.

Walsh shows a lot of potential as Jenny but that potential is sometimes lost as O'Riordan and her writing team light a series of fires around the Aherns.

Devereux is unfortunately saddled with a very moany role, while Mullen wanders around jaded, trying to mop up Dennis' mess.

The Dwyer boys are all very stiff characters and as a result, O'Mearain, O'Donnoghue and O'Sullivan struggle.

The same is true for Hardwicke as Joe, although Ayoola Smart does her best with a stock Rome as Grace's guilty best friend.

The story arc of Levin's schoolteacher Carl also treads a predictable path, although Hazel Doupe makes a decent fist of playing his daughter and the apple of Callum Dwyer's eye, Ingrid.

Justine Mitchell is also effective as the Dwyer children's real mum Elaine Lynch, while Carrie Crowley uses every inch of her experience to breathe some life into the part of Val's sister Mairead.

Fans of 'The Young Offenders' may be excited at the prospect of Hillary Rose demonstrating her credentials as a serious actress but they will feel she is underused.

Michael Patrick's Sergeant Manning is the most irritating country Guard since Sean Duggan's gauche Dez Breen in the Adrian Dunbar Channel Five and Virgin Media vehicle 'Blood'.

Hugh O'Connor also seems rather wasted in a role as Jenny's priggish fellow GP in the medical clinic where she works.

Graham has fun, though, as Dennis the Menace throughout the six episode run, as we piece together the scale of his corruption.

Daithi Keane and his cinematographer Cathal Watters deliver a very handsome show which makes full use of the rugged beauty of the Co Clare coastline and the decent budget at their disposal.

However the high production values cannot hide the deficiencies of a script which simply tries to do too much.

Like the BBC's rather disappointing Ulster thriller 'Bloodlands' with James Nesbitt, 'Smother' secured a second series immediately after RTE aired its first.

In crafting that follow-up, O'Riordain and her writers need to show they have learned to do much more with less plot.

Trying to pare back the narrative strands in 'Smother' in a second series will be no easy task.

However try they must.

(Series one of 'Smother' was broadcast on RTE1 from March 7-April 11, 2021 and on Alibi in the UK from June 6-July 11, 2021)