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    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Television»Drama
    Drama TV Shows - 1980s 3 Mins Read

    Strumpet City

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    1 9 8 0Β (Ireland)
    7 x 50 minute episodes

    Strumpet CityΒ was a period piece set in 1913 in Dublin.

    It had the predictable ingredients of poverty, ignorance and frustration. It had the usual quota of revolutionaries, sycophants and downtrodden working folk. It had the standard collection of clerics too: the ageing drunk, the time-server, and the young snotty-nosed thickhead.

    It was manufactured with more than average care, but even so was not particularly outstanding in terms of production values. The clothes were obviously costumes from a wardrobe department, and the lighting was merely illumination necessary to expose the film.

    The central story revolved around Mary (Angela Harding), a young domestic who comes to work for the wealthy, oblivious Bradshaws (Edward Byrne and Daphne Carroll). Once Mary meets handsome, kind foundry worker “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (Bryan Murray), she immediately falls in love, and the couple make plans to save enough money to eventually marry.

    Mary, distressed at the way the Bradshaws shuttle off their devoted housekeeper Miss Gilchrist (Mairin D. O’Sullivan) to the poor house when she can no longer work, decides to leave the insensitive Bradshaw household and marry Fitz.

    Unfortunately, historic events conspire to make the young couple’s life one of continued want and anxiety.

    Fitz’s involvement with the union frequently keeps him out of work, when he and his fellow workers go out on strikes. And once he works his way up to being foreman of the foundry, he’s suddenly caught between the obligations of his new job (and to his employers), and with his union brothers who expect him to walk out with him.

    The other main story involved the difficult path of Father O’Connor (Frank Grimes), a snobbish Catholic priest who, in a misguided attempt to ease his conscience, leaves his wealthy parish to work among Dublin’s most wretched tenement houses.

    Utterly unsuited to work among the poor (for whom he has a barely concealed disgust), Father O’Connor is greeted with open scorn by his superior, Father Giffley (Cyril Cusack), a troubled alcoholic who has spent too much time among the poor.

    Father O’Connor’s friend, Protestant businessman MrΒ Yearling (Denys Hawthorne), frequently challenges O’Connor on his beliefs and where his sympathies lie – which is almost always with the factory owners and with the well-to-do.

    Some attempt was made to recreate time and place, but a slum is a slum anywhere, anytime. So is a church and presbytery. The virtue of the settings was that they were acceptably dirty and poverty-stricken without overstatement.

    There was a deal of violence throughout, none of it very convincing. As stage fights go, most of the physical stuff inΒ Strumpet CityΒ was crude and amateurish. But the violence arose from believable causesΒ and ended with someone getting hurt.

    Fine character actors like Cyril Cusack showed what can be done with the part of a stereotype priest.

    Father O’Connor
    Frank Grimes
    RashersΒ TierneyΒ 
    David Kelly
    Mulhall
    Donal McCann
    Mary
    Angela Harding
    Fitz
    Bryan Murray
    Hennessy
    Brendan Cauldwell
    Father Giffley
    Cyril Cusack
    Mr Yearling
    Denys Hawthorne
    Mrs Bradshaw
    Daphne Carroll
    Mrs. Mulhall
    Eileen Colgan
    Pat
    Vinnie McCabe
    Lily
    Ruth Hegarty
    Mrs Hennessy
    Laurie Morton
    Willie Mulhall
    James Murphy
    Mr Bradshaw
    Edward Byrne
    Miss Gilchrist
    Mairin D. O’Sullivan
    Joe
    Gerry O’Brien
    Carrington
    Tom Irwin
    Jim Larkin
    Peter O’Toole
    Doggett
    Ronnie Walsh
    Father O’Sullivan
    Pat Laffan
    Maisie
    Eileen Murphy
    Keever
    Donal Farmer
    Hegarty
    Don Foley
    Silverwater
    John Franklyn
    Farrell
    Tom Jordan
    Mrs Farrell
    Brenda Doyle
    Mrs Bartley
    May Ollis

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