‘Ceart agus Coir’, a TG4 docudrama on capital punishment trials in the Irish Free State will start its six week broadcast on Tuesday, April 5th at 10pm. The fourth installment of the series from Midas Productions will explore the truth behind six cases of executions by the Irish state.
Directed by Colm Bairéad (Paidi’s Tale), produced by Cleona Ní Chrualaoi and executive produced by Mike Keane (Karl Spain Wants a Woman), the six-part series looks to paint an intimate picture of each capital punishment case and the characters involved and to offer an informed historical assessment of the Ireland in which these crimes occurred.
Among the cases featured in this line up of trails is the execution of farm labourer, James Myles for the murder of a Co. Louth father and son, gunned down in their own home in an Ardee bog in February 1924; the hanging of Patric K. Kelly for the attempted rape and vicious strangulation of a lone woman as she returned home from her local village of Riverstown, Co. Sligo in the Spring of 1941 and the case of Felix McMullen, a demobilised National Army Captain who received the ultimate sentence for killing a Civic Guard after an attempted bank robbery in Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow in January 1924.
Speaking publicly for the first time, relatives of both the victims and the men who were executed tell their story, while leading experts review each case asking if the punishment fitted the crime. Notable contributors include historians; Diarmaid Ferriter and Brian Hanley alongside police historian, Jim Herlihy; criminologist, Eoin O’Sullivan and Irish language crime novelists Anna Heussaff and Mícheál Ó’Ruairc.
The series filmed between October 2010 and January 2011 in locations around Dublin, Meath, Westmeath, Wicklow and Kerry. ‘Ceart agus Coir’ will air on TG4 every Tuesday for six weeks from April 5th at 10pm.
