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Machair
Overview
Machair was a Scottish Gaelic television soap opera produced by Scottish Television Enterprises between August 1992 and September 1998. The series was created and developed by Peter May and Janice Hally who was also the storyliner and principal scriptwriter. As there was no history of large-scale television drama output in the Gaelic language, the pair spent two years of preparatory work on the creation of the show. Their initial proposal for Head of Drama at Scottish Television, Robert Love, included details not only of the characters and storylines for the show but details of the process required to find, recruit and train actors and writers. They went on to conduct actors' workshops, screentests, and writing courses to train the talent they had found to a professional standard for television. Machair was written in English and translated into Gaelic, then given English subtitles and broadcast at peak viewing time. Although the concept was initially greeted with derision by the press, when the show aired it received unanimous praise from reviewers. Kenneth Roy, television critic of Scotland on Sunday, described it as 'a credit to the company and a smack in the face to those of us who were doubtful' and after a few episodes said 'it is even better than it looked at first glance quite simply the best thing to have happened to television in Scotland for a long time'. Viewers were in accord with him as it achieved a 30% audience share and made it into the Top Ten of programmes viewed in Scotland, in spite of the fact that fewer than 2% of the Scottish population can speak Gaelic. It was nominated for awards for production and writing from The Celtic Film Festival and Writers Guild of Great Britain.