When Hardy Bucks won StoryLand, RTÉ's drama competition, last year, the web series became an online phenomenon, with three million hits, and an instant word-of-mouth favourite.
Filmed in Swinford, Co Mayo, Hardy Bucks follows the lives of four lazy but likeable lads from the fictional Castletown.
Hardy Bucks explores life in small town Ireland for a group of 20 something slacker lads and their attempts to find the craic wherever that may be. Despite the economic down turn, life in Castletown, Co Mayo hasn't changed much for 20 something Eddie Durkan. When things start to go belly up his friends Buzz, French Toast and Boo are there to give him advice and help him find the craic despite local drug dealer The Viper always trying to get one over on him.
Hardy Bucks is an Irish series of web-based comedy short films written by Chris Tordoff and Martin
Maloney. The series won the 2009 Storyland competition held by Irish national broadcaster, RTÉ.
From a total of 122 applications to participate in the competition, nine projects were commissioned
to make one episode each. These episodes were released in March 2009. With all nine projects on
the website, the public could vote for their favourite and at the end of every month the shows with the
smallest response would be ‘voted off’, leaving the remaining teams to make the next episode with the
same €8000 budget per episode.[1] The show has been likened to the Trailer Park Boys, a Canadian
mockumentary, with Tordoff citing the show as an influence. To date, ten webisodes have been released
amongst several short compilations of outtakes. The cast have performed live shows in The Academy,
Dublin, the Róisín Dubh in Galway and Trinity Rooms in Limerick. As of March 2010, total hits for the
videos produced have exceeded 3 million.
Episode 1 The Skyline
Episode 2 Zambez1 Nites
Episode 3 King of the town
Hardy Bucks Complete Series 1 with over 2 hours of unseen footage, out-takes, deleted scenes, interviews and a whole host of other delights.