Derry Girls: The "Uncle Colm" Before the Storm
It's a storm of sheer boredom...
I love Derry Girls. It’s this extremely Irish show about a group of five (mostly) girls growing up in Ireland during the Troubles. They have strange adventures with a group of wild Irish characters in their little town of Londonderry. I love all five of the characters, but in particular, I love “Uncle Colm”.
Uncle Colm is the guy you’d see and as soon as you opened up and asked him a question about anything, he will just talk your ear off about the most annoying and asinine shit for an hour. No one seems to be able to stop him. Uncle Colm just goes on and on. He jumps ahead sometimes, he moves in reverse some times. He forgets things and reaches back through your mind to whatever he was talking about. He treats you like like a lift down at the county fair. You're up, you're down you're up, you're down, you're done. I hope you didn't throw up along the way.
One fun thing about that wrongly talkative character is this idea that everyone knows somebody like that. We all know this guy of nearly any age that completely bores you. There is little you can do about it. You’ll see him and he will go off on some long diatrabe about something he told his wife, or the way he was looking for a long pepper in his garden, or the way he did a thing he can't remember 4 no... 6 years ago when he went to the fair see a guy about something he doesn't remember.
We all know that guy and love him or not, we hate him.
One of my favorite moments on Derry Girls was the episode in season three where the girls get arrested by cops for something they've taken way too far. Apparently these boys broke into their school while they were breaking into the school, but the boys stole a ton of computer equipment. Plus since the entire show is taking place in the 90s during the troubles, I remember really feeling like the Derry Girls were all going to go to jail by the end of the episode.
That’s because the director of the officers is none other than Liam Neeson, the lead character in the first of the latest wave of "old man beat'em up" movies, like the Taken series, Equalizer films, or Nobody. I remember Neeson originally from the role he played in Love Actually where he played a loving widowed father with a thing for Claudia Schiffer, but I should have known better because 10 years before that he was the star of Darkman, the oddball superhero movie from 1990 written and directed by Sam Raimi about a freakish character that has a machine to help him change his face when he wants and super strength due to an accident involving fire. I know... It's some Phantom of the Opera shit, and also the first movie to make me cry as a kid.
So Liam Neeson is the officer that has to interrogate the Derry Girls. He's playing it kind of like he did Darkman too. He's a little scary on this comedy show. That's probably how they direct Liam Neeson now, "Could you give us less Love Actually and more Darkman please.” So in this episode he's already caught the girls and he's being scary. The Derry Girls need to call an adult so rather than calling any of their parents, they instead call their good old Uncle Colm who comes out to their rescue.
What did they ask him?
Why are they there?
What did he want?
Where is the tape!
No one will ever remember. Just get these Derry Girls the hell out of there please and let's never bring up that missing computer equipment again.
Yes... Uncle Colm is the most fun character on the funnest show who that would show up sometimes. I love how the families always avoid him and how no one wants to be mean to him to his face are just the beautiful little crumbs that make Uncle Colm such a generationally great character. He's the boring guy we love but hate. Remember that character whenever you have a Liam Neeson wearing you down.