The English: Hugo Blick on why he cast Irish actors in his hit series 

Having frequently cast Irish actors in his series - most recently Ciarán Hinds, Steve Wall and Stephen Rea in The English - he says he’s long been a fan of Ireland’s acting talent.

“I was really interested in ensuring that we didn't have many Americans in that project, because I was wanting to have this idea of a diaspora from Europe heading across into the American west, so that the Native American perspective could see it from this generic idea of being foreign,” he says.

“For performances, I look to work with a number of Irish actors. I love working with Irish actors, because I find that there's a great dexterity with language.

“My writing has a particular quality to it - I find that the Irish mind like Stephen Rea's really engages with those rhythms. I've sought it out and will continue to do so - I'd like to make an Irish-set project because I just love that talent pool."

Hence, the Oscar nomination haul didn't surprise Blick.  “For something like The Quiet Girl it's nothing but a huge help. Anything that assists that project to be seen by more people is fantastic - it's just wonderful to see that success.” 

 Produced by the BBC and Amazon Prime, The English is the latest series from Blick. It stars Emily Blunt as a woman seeking out those she sees responsible for the death of her son. Blick will share his experiences of it and his other work at this year’s Fís summit in Galway on February 2.

Now in its sixth year, the summit brings creatives from all sectors of the TV industry together to learn from and connect with each other.

In some ways, The English revises what we think we know about westerns. “It has a particular relationship to the mid 20th century period of the West in terms of its look and its cinema scope, its technicolor quality. To that degree, it's a kind of love letter to the genre,” he says. 

“I was really interested in using a story that critiqued it as well, so that it both celebrated and inverted it. It is revisionist, but it uses a classicism as its vehicle to sort of smuggle the revisionism in, as it were.

“You've got this very archetypal male, cinematic hero that would normally be played by Clint Eastwood or Paul Newman and of that period, even a John Wayne, and there it is, it's a Native American lead, personified by a brilliant performance by Chaske Spencer. He still is that cinematic hero, it's just the biggest political statement you can make is that he's Pawnee. And he takes his Pawnee inheritance with him through the story, the psychology of it, and its loss and its strengths.”

 The series was partly informed by his own experience of working on a ranch in early adulthood when he travelled from his native Britain to the US.

“When I was young man I was out in Montana for over a year and used to ranch and elk hunt and goodness knows what. Part of the basis of The English was a personal experience of living in Montana, in my formative young adulthood. I got to see the last vestiges of the Old West, really, it was in the early '80s.” 

Blick has forged a hugely successful career but opts to focus on his own stories rather than adapting other people’s work. “I just have this thing where there is an itch that is so demanding of my time to scratch it that I have to do it. I would have done nothing else, I can't do anything else.

“I can't do anything else for anyone else, either. I get a lot of approaches to maybe have a go at someone else's work. I just can't see it. I know how hard it is, because as a writer, you create all this scaffolding when you're constructing an idea.

“And then you get into the heart of the idea. Once you get into the heart of it, you can make it, you can understand it, you can film it. I'm just a cottage industry of one.” 

• For details of the Fís summit, see www.ardan.ie