Ealú - The Frank Carty Escape 1920

TG4 will broadcast the episode of EALÚ which deals with the rescue of Frank Carty (right) of Sligo IRA from Sligo gaol in 1920 at 10.30 pm tonight, Thursday, with a repeat on Monday at 00.10. It should be available on the TG4 Player after transmission.

I was interviewed as a local history "expert" for the programme and some parts of the interview will be included. I speak in Irish but subtitles will be used for those who can't understand Irish or can't understand my Irish.

The series is made by Magamedia from Galway. I've already seen the programme at a preview in the grounds of Sligo gaol last year. It's very well made with clever economical effective use of reconstructions. I did think the scene where the IRA leader, Billy Pilkington, who became a Catholic priest afterwards, stole a Bible from Carty's cell a bit too clever! Ah well, that's TV for you.

Ealú - Frank Carty Rescue from Sligo Gaol 1920

I attended the preview of the Carty escape Magamedia drama/documentary for TG4 in the series Ealú which is about prison escapes. It took place in the impressive Cinema North West mobile facility in the yard of Sligo Gaol last Monday.

It's interesting to see how such programmes are put together. Three or four 'experts' were interviewed and their interviews were cut and jig sawed together to make a more or less coherent account. There was also a narrator, someone with one of those authoritative voices which carries the ring of truth about it.

Then there was the reconstruction. Very effective though quite simple. Some shots of a prison wall, rope ladder being thrown and falling, men running in a yard. Nicely filmed sequences of the overpowering of a guard, of the waking of the governor and the taking of the keys and the opening of Carty's cell. Also some nice shots of a small IRA column moving in the mountains, crossing picturesque streams etc. All expertly put together in a coherent story.

I was surprised by how close-up my filming was - though maybe this was just the effect of the big screen. I was pleased that my Irish seemed OK and I didn't spot any glaring grammatical mistake. Nor indeed any glaring historical inaccuracy.

Paddy Hayes, the series director introduced the programme in Sligo and stressed that this was a jailbreak, a rescue not just an escape. Billy Pilkington, the Sligo IRA O/C planned and carried out the rescue. It's ironic that Carty and Pilkington didn't get on well afterwards though both took the anti-Treaty side in the civil war. Pilkington became a Redemptorist priest afterwards and spent most of his life in South Africa. Carty joined Fianna Fáil and became a TD.

I don't know when the programme will be shown, sometime in this autumn or winter. Watch the TV schedules!