Small Town, Big Story is set in a small town in Ireland with a big secret to hide. And things get tough when a Hollywood production decides to shoot a movie on their doorstep, threatening to uncover truths that have stayed hidden since the turn of the Millennium.
Created and directed by Bridesmaids star Chris O’Dowd, the series stars Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as Wendy Patterson, a local girl turned hot-shot TV producer, and Paddy Considine as local doctor Seamus Proctor, who is a pillar of the community.
Chris O’Dowd says: “I bloody love television, and am most engrossed by stories that bring the remarkable to the everyday. I hope we’ve made a beautiful show that an audience will find funny and will keep people on the edge of their seats…and beyond.”
Here’s everything you need to know about the series Small Town, Big Story…
Small Town, Big Story release date
Small Town, Big Story is a six-part series launching on Sky Atlantic and NOW from Thursday 27 February 2025. As soon as we hear details on its US release and channel, we'll update here.
Is there a trailer for Small Town, Big Story?
Yes a trailer for Small Town, Big Story has just been released by Sky. Do take a look below...
Small Town, Big Story plot
Small Town, Big Story follows the residents of Drumban, a small rural village on the border of Ireland and ‘another world’, who have been keeping a huge secret since the eve of the Millennium. But then a big Hollywood production team, with top producer Wendy Patterson (Christina Hendricks) arrives to film an epic drama in the village and throws the area into the spotlight. Can the residents, a collection of ‘rattled misfits’, keep long-buried truths from being revealed to the world?
The locals often meet in The White Ridge bar (see pictured below), a quintessential Irish pub at the heart of the village. A gathering place for a band of Drumbánian oddballs. There's a mystery llama involved too (see main picture above).
Small Town, Big Story cast — Christina Hendricks on playing Wendy Patterson
Christina Hendricks plays local girl done good Wendy Patterson, who’s now a Hollywood TV producer who returns to Drumbán after over 20 years, having left there under something of a cloud.
Christina says: "Small Town, Big Story is about a town in rural Ireland. It becomes the location for this big Hollywood production. It's all about location. I play Wendy, a film producer who is coming back to her hometown. I bring this big Hollywood production to this small place that’s never experienced anything like this. So, it's my old world and my new world combining. The story is about the town's reaction to having Hollywood on its doorstep and a studio and crew adapting to being in this small town. And then, of course, there's a spin on the fact that there's also something else happening which involves several of the characters and Wendy’s past.
"We meet Wendy in California, in Los Angeles. We see a little bit of her surroundings, her home, and we get to know her just a little bit. There are some little clues about her lifestyle. We quickly find out that she's got this work opportunity. A new producing gig back in her childhood home in Ireland for this big studio called History with a Twist. Its’ a bigger project than she's ever worked on before. So, it's a big deal for Wendy. You will discover that she might just be a little bit in over her head. She's learning as she goes, but she's really trying to have this confident pose about herself, saying, "I got this," but as the story progresses things really start to fall apart for her a little bit.
In Small Town Big Story, we have a lot of flashbacks to the millennium and a teenage Wendy and Seamus. We see Wendy’s adolescence back in Drumbán. They capture those sort of awkward teen moments but beautiful moments you have growing up. She’s young, a gothy rock'n'roll teenager interested in Seamus with the world at her feet. I think the Wendy I play remains that person a little bit, but you start to see that maybe she felt a little bit like an outsider back then. The flashbacks are all moments in her life that revolve around the time something rather significant happened in her life. (She had this alien abduction.) So young Wendy and adult Wendy are not too far apart; they are very similar and have experienced this event that really changed her trajectory.
"Wendy starts out very trepidatious about going home to Ireland. It's been over 20 years, she's completely reinvented herself in LA with her job, but she has this opportunity to bring this big production back home.
She thinks, if she's ever going to go back and confront her past, if she's going to have a relationship with her father again and really put to bed her negative feelings about this hometown, this is the time to do it. And why not come back as a big Hollywood producer with this big fancy show and say, "Hey, look at me, I'm back," in such a grand way. She starts off on this journey to confront her past and finds out very quickly that it's not as satisfying as she hoped it would be. All the channels she’s using to try to reconnect with people from the smalltown are falling apart here and there. Her whole plan is not working; the production is not going well, the relationships are not going well, and then there are all these signs of the otherworldly events, that happened before are happening again. So, there's this uncertainty of what's going to happen next, all around her."
* Christina Hendricks is best known for her role as Joan Harris in the hit show Mad Men but she’s also starred in Bad Girls, Bad Santa 2, Ginger and Rosa, The Buccaneers and Tin Star and voiced characters in animations such as Robot Chicken, Solar Opposites, Scoob and Tinker Bell and the Pirate Fairy.
Who else is starring in Small Town, Big Story?
Small Town, Big Story has a great cast. Paddy Considine (House of the Dragon, The Third Day and The Outsider) is Drumban’s local doctor Seamus Proctor. He has a neat and well-ordered life, or at least he thinks he does. Soon he will find himself in the eye of a storm as a celluloid circus descends, threatening to blow open a secret he has been harboring since the Millennium.
David Wilmot plays Keith McCurdle , Michelle Forbes is Barbara the butcher, Peter McGann is Matt Magee and Evanne Kilgallon barkeeper Shelly McGoldrick.
Chris O'Dowd cameos as a Drumban local Jack E McCarthy, plus look out for Eileen Walsh (Catastrophe) as Catherine Proctor, Séamus’ wife and local schoolteacher. Leia Murphy (Fair City) and David Rawle (Moone Boy) star as siblings Joanne and Sonny Proctor. Patrick Martins (The Confessions of Frannie Langton) stars as Jules O’Brien, Evanne Kilgallon (Obituary) stars as Shelly McGoldrick, Andrew Bennett (The Quiet Girl) stars as Barry Battles, Ruth McCabe (Aisha) stars as Betty Battles, David Wilmot (The Alienist) stars as Keith McCurdle, Michèle Forbes (Omagh) stars as Barbara the Butcher. Sam C Wilson (House of The Dragon) stars as Big Jim, Peter McGann (The Apprentice) stars as Matt Magee, Ruth Codd (The Midnight Club) stars as Production Peggy, Jamie Michie (Game Of Thrones) stars as Pubba McGoldrick, Ian McElhinney (The Split) stars as Reverend Patterson, Clarke Peters (The Wire) stars as Chet Donald, Tim Heidecker (Tim and Eric Awesome Show) stars as Brad.
Behind the scenes and more on Small Town, Big Story
Small Town, Big Story is a Sky Original series produced by Playground / FilmNation Entertainment and HotCod Productions in association with Sky Studios. Executive producers are Colin Callender and Scott Huff for Playground, Glen Basner, Milan Popelka and Stefanie Berk for FilmNation Entertainment, and Alex Moody for Sky Studios. Christina Hendricks and Chris O’Dowd are executive producers, Liz Gill is series producer. Directors include Chris O’Dowd, Catherine Morshead, as well as Mike Ahern and Enda Loughman. NBCUniversal Global TV Distribution handle international sales of the series on behalf of Sky Studios.
Chris O'Dowd says: "I'd been looking for something to set in the northwest of Ireland. I'd previously shot in Boyle before with Moone Boy, and I always wanted to go back, but never got around to it. I suppose I was looking for a ‘Small Town’ story but this time I wanted to make somewhere up – ‘Drumbán’.
"Then a producer friend got in touch with me. They had been watching something I had written and had enjoyed it, so he asked me if I wanted to work together. He was working in Northern Ireland when they were filming Game of Thrones, and we ruminated on the phone about what a fun story it would be, one about a small town and what it might look like after a big show production had left. That was the initial idea. Then in development I did a rewind and thought about what that town would look like beforehand too.
"I had also just reread a play called "The Visit" by Frederick Dürrenmatt. It's a complex revenge story which is an interesting journey for its lead character to go on. I wanted these two ideas meshed, those two elements, and then I thought it also needed a secret that characters could keep or not keep. That’s the part about aliens, which has always been a big part of my experiences in Boyle anyway. Even when I created Moone Boy we had an episode about an alien - Boyle was the UFO capital of Europe. I feel the idea is all in those things together."
