Available on
Video, DVD

Title  The Hanging Gale
This miniseries is the only feature film to deal with the 'Great Hunger.' Between 1845 and 1847 blight hit Ireland's potato crop basically eliminating the staple food of the poor. Let me remind the reader that, at the time of the potato famine, Ireland was the breadbasket of the British Empire, shipping food around the world. Tenant farmers grew potatoes for themselves and cash crops to pay the rents on their farms. The people starved because rents were so high there was little of the food they grew to feed themselves. When they found that rents for tenant farmers in England were half that of those in Ireland, unrest spread through the land. The tenants tried begging, cajoling, threatening and murdering the landlords, but there were just too many others willing to take over the farms and try to make the rent. Forced from their land, over a million died of fever or starvation. Another million emigrated. See also: Captain Boycott, another film about tenant farmers oppressed by British landlords.			Click picture for more info
Year   1995	Type   Drama	Rating   NR
Director  Diarmuid Lawrence		Writer  Allan Cubitt
Cast  Joe McGann, Mark McGann, Paul McGann, Stephen McGann,   Michael Kitchen, Sean McGinley