Personal testimony from all sides fuel a five-part look on PBS by director James Bluemel at Northern Ireland over 30 years of political and sectarian violence.
An oral history with pictures, “Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland” is a five-part journey through the three-decade political-sectarian conflict familiarly and conservatively known as “the Troubles.” Driven by the reminiscences and observations of people who lived through it, it is something of a companion piece to director James Bluemel‘s 2020 “,” about that country in the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Speakers come from all sides of the story — Catholics and Protestants, Republicans and loyalists, victims and victimizers, paramilitary members, police, punks, prisoners and prisoners’ wives and children, widows and orphans. Some are well known at home for their involvement in famous cases or as cultural figures, but all are essentially “ordinary.” There are no scholarly talking heads, no dispassionate journalists; political figures are seen only in archival footage.
Without going into the long, complicated and confounding history of the Irish under British rule, the story told here begins in the late 1960s, when Catholics in Derry and Belfast began to demonstrate for their civil rights. Since the 1921 partition of the island into what became the independent Republic of Ireland and British Northern Island, repressive laws had kept Protestant loyalists in power in the north. Protests were met with violence; the British army was called in.
Although “Once Upon a Time” spends most of its time with those whose lives were upended or defined by the Troubles, we do get reminders that something like normal life went on. People fell in love, got married, had kids who played in the streets — albeit hard by barbed wire — and grew up and fell in love and got married.
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ONCE UPON A TIME IN NORTHERN IRELAND (New Series Premiere)Premieres Monday, Aug. 28, 2023 at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., Tuesday, Aug. 29 at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 30 at 10 p.m. on KPBS TV / PBS App. From the makers of the BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning “Once Upon a Time in Iraq” comes a unique five-part film set in Northern Ireland. Exploring the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland known as 'The Troubles,” the series tell the story through the intimate testimony of ordinary men, women, and children who were drawn—both willingly and unwillingly—into the bitter clashes that rocked the nation and who are still struggling to hold on to a fragile peace today.
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