| The Hanging Gale | |
|---|---|
 The Old Warehouses in Ramelton, the main location for The Hanging Gale | |
| Genre | Historical drama |
| Written by | Allan Cubitt |
| Directed by | Diarmuid Lawrence |
| Starring | Joe McGann Paul McGann Mark McGann Stephen McGann Michael Kitchen |
| Composer | Shaun Davey |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom–Ireland |
| Original language | English |
| No. of episodes | 4 |
| Production | |
| Producer | Jonathan Cavendish |
| Production locations | Ramelton, County Donegal, Ulster |
| Cinematography | Rex Maidment |
| Editor | Don Fairservice |
| Running time | 4 × 52 minutes |
| Production companies | Little Bird Films BBC Northern Ireland Raidió Teilifís Éireann |
| Original release | |
| Network | RTÉ One |
| Release | 2 May – 23 May 1995 |
| Infobox instructions (only shown in preview) | |
The Hanging Gale is a four-episode television serial which first aired on RTÉ One (Republic of Ireland) and BBC1 (United Kingdom) in 1995. The series was a British–Irish co-production, made by Little Bird Films for BBC Northern Ireland in association with Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), with support from the Irish Film Board.
The serial, set in 1846 in County Donegal in the west of Ulster at the beginning of Ireland's Great Famine, starred the four McGann brothers: Joe McGann, Paul McGann, Mark McGann and Stephen McGann, and was based on an original idea by Joe and Stephen McGann while researching their family's history.[1]
The title of the series comes from the term 'hanging gale', the name for a widespread practice in Ireland at the time, where a landlord would allow new tenants a six-month grace period on payment of their rent, with the expectation that the rent owed would be paid when the land's crops were harvested and sold.[2]
- ^ Llewellyn-Jones, M. (2002). Contemporary Irish Drama & Cultural Identity. Bristol: Intellect Books. ISBN 1841500542.
- ^ Philpin, Charles (2002). Nationalism and popular protest in Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521525012.