‘These Sacred Vows’: A Dead Priest, a Drunken Wedding and the Soul of Modern Ireland

Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment The opening of These Sacred Vows feels like The White Lotus — brought to you by Ryanair. Instead of a swanky resort in Hawaii, Scilly or Thailand, the new Irish series, which screened at international TV festival Series Mania this week , opens on a trashed rent-a-villa, somewhere on Tenerife. The sun shines on the empty wine bottles and related detritus of last night’s debauched party. In the pool, a priest is floating face down. Dead. Rewind to a week earlier. It’s a destination wedding. The priest has been flown in to officiate the ceremony and is being lodged with the friends of the bride. Amidst the drunk, half-naked and lascivious troupe, Father Vincent O’Keeffe, in his dark black suit and pasty bald pate, strikes an incongruous figure. The mystery of how the priest ended up in the pool is, we’re told in voice over by the dead man himself, played by Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, will be solved over the next six episodes. Related Stories TV HBO Max Inks First-Look Deal With 'Sirât' Producer Domingo Corral Movies Wim Wenders to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award From German Film Academy We are quickly introduced to a host of potential suspects, including the parents of the bride, Jerry and Sandra (Jason O’Mara and Justine Mitchell), the Molly-popping DJ Glen (Shane Daniel Byrne), and Cormac (Adam John Richardson), a teacher with some suspicious physical injuries. Each one, we discover, is hiding a dark secret. The stage is set for a cosy crime comedy, an Irish Death in Paradise . But These Sacred Vows creator John Butler has something else in mind, using the engine of a mystery to tell a much bigger story, one that touches on queer identity, community and the place of religious faith in a secular society. “It is a cosy crime opener, there is a coz...