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 Kitrchen), 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