Ballaghaderreen and its people are the stars of the opening sequence for ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’.

Ballaghaderreen (in Irish Bealach an Doirín meaning ‘way of the little oak wood’) in County Roscommon is located on the Mayo Roscommon border. The town was part of County Mayo until the end of the nineteenth century, when it was transferred to County Roscommon under the Local Government Act of 1898.

The RTÉ camera crew capture the town when local secondary school students who are most likely on their lunch break make their way through the Market Square and around Ballaghadereen.

This episode of ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’ was broadcast on 30 March 1977.

Once a week from June to September, the ‘Hall’s Pictorial Weekly’ film crew would arrive at a town or village in any county in Ireland. They would film the people and the place and return to RTÉ where the footage was edited and put to music.

This short film of around one minute’s duration formed part of the opening sequence for that week’s episode. But no-one knew which location had been chosen, and it was not advertised as part of the programme billings in the RTÉ Guide or newspapers.

So with this in mind people the length and breadth of the country tuned in religiously, in case it was the turn of their town or village to have its few minutes of fame.