About The Dry
The Dry is an Irish comedy-drama created by Nancy Harris that premiered on RTE in 2022 and streamed internationally on ITVX. The series follows Shiv Sheridan, who moves back home to Dublin after years away and arrives newly sober, determined to stay dry while she rebuilds her life. The trouble is that her loud, loving and deeply chaotic family treats a drink as the answer to every occasion, from celebrations to funerals to ordinary Tuesday evenings, and her hard-won sobriety is tested from the moment she walks through the door.
At the heart of the show is the Sheridan family, anchored by Shiv's parents Tom and Bernie, whose marriage carries its own quiet strains, and a tangle of siblings, exes and old friends who each pull Shiv back toward the person she used to be. Recovery here is not a tidy montage but a daily negotiation, full of awkward meetings, relapse scares, romantic missteps and the particular pressure of being the only one in the room not drinking. The writing treats addiction with empathy and honesty while finding genuine warmth and comedy in the mess.
Across two seasons The Dry balances sharp family farce with real emotional stakes, watching Shiv stumble, recover and slowly learn to hold her ground. The performances ground the humour in something tender and recognisable, and the show became one of the more talked-about Irish dramedies of its era for the way it handled sobriety, dysfunction and the stubborn bonds of family without sentimentality or easy answers.
