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.