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This poignant and powerfully executed 1981 drama set in Northern Ireland during ‘the Troubles’ centres around Maeve Sweeney, a young woman who – after having spent time as a student in London – returns to her hometown of Belfast where the past catches up with her in more ways than just one.
Mary Jackson plays the titular character who increasingly finds herself at odds when she returns to her parent’s home in Belfast during the height of ‘the Troubles’… unwilling to accept a society dominated by men and the Catholic Church while at the other end of the spectrum English soldiers take great pleasure in tyrannising and humiliating the Irish locals.
âI was half-dreading the 100th anniversary, but in fact, the research and the events that happened were very, very considered,â says Murphy.
âIn 1966, it was just an utterly unquestioning, nationalist commemoration. I remember as a schoolgirl buying into that, like a lot of us did, in those days. There was a TV series that went on all week, called Insurrection, a mockumentary of each day of the Rising. Iâve seen it since; itâs kind of fascinating. We were kind of thrilled by that. We felt it was like a totally accurate representation of the way things were, had television cameras been there. So to move from that, directly after that, to Belfast, was quite a shock. We had moved â inadvertently â into a fairly loyalist neighbourhood. And then when the trouble started, we moved into a nationalist neighbourhood. I can remember hearing gunfire and thinking: the Rising must have been like this. That it wasnât this kind of great, glorious flag-waving