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The Irish Revolution
RTE Player, until March 7, episodes 1-3 It’s the story we think we all know — the evolution of our country from pre-1916, through the Eater Rising and into the War of Independence that followed. Except, of course, most of us have only a sketchy outline of what went on, coloured as much by myth and revisionism as by actual fact.
Which is why RTE’s flagship three-part series, The Irish Revolution, throws up so much that is new, alongside the familiar.
Directed by Ruan Magan, who said of it, “We are presenting people with their own history. It’s the history we think we know, but we don’t really know. Nobody has put the pieces together like this before,” this uses cleverly-deployed archive material with contemporary drone footage, expert talking heads and animated graphics, based on John Crowley’s bestselling Atlas of the Irish Revolution.
Tying it all together is a narration by actor Cillian Murphy. The timeline is 1912 to 1923, and one of the most interesting aspects of the series is the positioning of the Irish public, rather than the IRA, as the impetus for the British withdrawal in 1922. “The majority of people living on the island of Ireland had reached a point where they couldn’t accept foreign rule,” Magan says. “It wasn’t a military defeat ultimately. It was a people’s revolution with them saying, ‘we won’t serve you in shops, we won’t drive your trains, we won’t respect your courts’. It was that which ultimately defeated the will of the British to remain.”
Breakfast Wine
Virgin media Player, until March 18 This short film — 11 minutes — is written by Kevin Barry and directed by Ian FitzGibbon. Dylan Moran and David Pearse are the two stalwarts who stand outside J Kelliher’s public house at 11am, waiting for the bar to open so they can begin their daily round of pints of stout interrupted by desultory chat. Until a mysterious young woman (Ruth Bradley, left) arrives to disrupt their routine. Beautifully shot and darkly funny, this is well worth a watch.