Deadpan Pictures North Ltd

Deadpan Pictures is an award-winning television production company specialising in drama with humour, run by Ailish McElmeel and International Emmy award-winner Paul Donovan with offices in Dublin and Belfast.

In 2024/25 Deadpan produced 18 hours of drama, including Irish Blood starring Alicia Silverstone, AMC’s Acorn TV best performing series ever, a coproduction with Shaftesbury, Canada; This is not a Murder Mystery, a high end period drama, for Studio Canal and the New 8 with Panenka, Belgium; Showkids a family series for RTE and Madgic, and Video Nasty, a coming-of-age darkly comic horror for BBC, Virgin Media Television, WDR and BoatRocker. Deadpan are currently greenlit for season 2 of Irish Blood and are scripting season 2 of Video Nasty.

Previous productions include critically acclaimed Northern Lights (Lionsgate and ZDF); Can’t Cope Won’t Cope (RTE, BBC and Netflix); the award-winning Dead Still, (RTE, Acorn and ZDFS); Nowhere Fast (RTE and BBC Studios); the ratings hit The South Westerlies; Women on the Verge (UKTV) and Departure 2 (Peacock) with Shaftesbury Films in Canada.

• Production