Ian McElhinney[1] Steve Blount[2] Liam Carney[1] Pádraic Delaney[2] Bríain Gleeson[2] David Herlihy[2] Ann Marie Horan[2] Nick Lee[2] Ruth McCabe[3] Michael McElhatton[2] Charlene McKenna[1] Laura Murphy[1] Marcella Plunkett[2] Gavin O'Connor[2] Single-Handed is an Irish television drama series, first broadcast on RTÉ Television in 2007.

Set and filmed in the west of Ireland, it focuses on the life of a member of the Garda Síochána (police), Sergeant Jack Driscoll (played by Owen McDonnell).

[8][9] Owen McDonnell was given the lead role of Garda Sergeant Jack Driscoll after receiving a call from casting director Maureen Hughes.

Appearing onstage in The Lieutenant of Inishmore in the Town Hall, Galway at the time, McDonnell, alongside two other cast members, left for Dublin to read a script for the original Single-Handed director Colm McCarthy.

[6] However, leading actor Owen McDonnell has been able to escape a significant increase in recognition by the general public as, according to him, "once you're out of the uniform you're fairly anonymous".

[12] Heralding it as "the real deal" and "that rare oddity—an RTE drama that works" and drawing comparisons to the Roman Polanski film Chinatown, he said "it didn't lose its nerve by resorting to far-fetched plot twists or ludicrous melodrama".

[15] Patrick Freyne, also writing in the Sunday Tribune, called Single-Handed 3 "all puffed up with a melodramatic 'I-can't-believe-it's-not-drama' form of drama in which people glare at one another, shout, are unhelpfully abrasive for no reason, and give each other symbolic bullets".

[20] When Single-Handed eventually aired in the UK in 2009, Boland noted the reactions of the British newspaper critics, remarking satirically on how "The Guardian's Sam Wollaston and The Independent's Tom Sutcliffe[21] couldn't contain their surprise that dark doings lurked behind the 'stunning scenery' of this Irish Hoirtbeat.