Season 1 • Episode 1
LatestWhen employers refused to give in to the workers' demands, the poverty-stricken masses were left struggling to support themselves and their families, and the tale focuses on individual responses to the suffering all around them.
Strumpet City was a 1980 television miniseries produced by Irish broadcaster RTÉ, based on James Plunkett's 1969 novel Strumpet City. It was RTÉ's most ambitious and expensive production to date. The script was written by Hugh Leonard, and Peter O'Toole played James Larkin, the union leader.
Acting
Peter O'Toole's towering, terrifying James Larkin.
Production
RTÉ blew their entire budget and it shows gloriously.
Writing
Hugh Leonard's script makes politics genuinely intimate.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
RTÉ built entire Dublin slum street on their studio lot — it stayed for years as their generic 'old Dublin' set.
Plunkett based Rashers Tierney on his own father; the novel's dedication reads 'To my father, who was not Rashers Tierney' — a lie that tells its own truth.
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