Glenroe was an "embarrassment"

MARY McEvoy, who played Miley’s love interest in Glenroe RTE’s long running soap, has said that the show was axed by RTE because it was an embarrassment to the station.

The actress who played the part of Biddy in the series which ran for 18 years until it was axed in 2001, said that RTE made the decision to bring the show to a close because it was an inconvenience to the station.

“It’s a show that survived by accident and was popular with people, but I believe it was an inconvenience to RTE,” she told ‘Ireland’s Own’ magazine.

The actress, whose character was killed in a road accident the year before the series ended, told the magazine that senior people in RTE did not know or understand the appeal of the show.

“At the time it was cancelled we were becoming an increasingly urban society, and I think we country people were the unwanted at that stage.

“We were an embarrassment in general, with our country image, and the urban Dublin arts press never had much time for us or even for television in general.”