The Hanging Gale

TV : Drama : DVD quality : Ratio: 4.3 : English

Top rated four part miniseries from BBC (Northern Ireland) - 1995. Four 50 minute episodes. This is a good quality DVD rip. Stars Joe McGann, Mark McGann, Paul McGann, Stephen McGann, Michael Kitchen, Fiona Victory and Tina Kellegher.

Thanks to Ulysses56.

From E. Cobham Brewer 1810-1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898. "Hanging Gale (The)" The custom of taking six months’ grace in the payment of rent which prevailed in Ireland. ....."We went to collect the rents due the 25th March, but which, owing to the custom which prevails in Ireland known as ‘the hanging gale,’ are never demanded till the 29th September.”—The Times, November, 1885.

"Based on an original idea by two of the McGann quartet (Stephen and Joe) The Hanging Gale is a brilliant evocation of the Irish potato famine of the 1840's and how it affects the fortunes of the Phelan family.

Like one of those doorstop novels by Maeve Binchy or even Catherine Cookson this is a proper saga. It's 1846 in Donegal (mostly filmed in the gorgeous old town of Ramelton) and the Great famine is in full swing, the Phelan family's trouble start when local landowner Lord Hawksborough appoints a new English land agent, Townsend (played with delicious menace by Michael Kitchen), who, despite having his life saved by the Phelan's, is very quick to show his displeasure with the way things are being run. Soon matters are at breaking point, with crops full of blight and starvation at the doorstep the Phelan's are on the verge of organising a bloody revolt.

It's heart wrenching stuff, the hardships the Irish families faced back then was incredible and The Hanging Gale pulls no punches in its portrayal of the privations faced by the Phelans. The four McGann brothers work brilliantly, together on film for the first time, but the real kudos have to go to Michael Kitchen, one of those rare actors who can be incredibly menacing but you are still charmed by him." (memorabletv.com)

See information at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111995/