Television Review Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland: A moving and introspective story of the Troubles

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“For what?” Fiona wonders. What did her brother and more than 3,500 others lose their lives during 30 years of violence?

A stunning new BBC/PBS documentary mini-series on The Troubles opens with this short but sought-after question and continues to address it throughout. Over five episodes – ranging from the powder keg of the 1960s to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 – Once upon a time in Northern Ireland recounts the devastating conflict by delicately bringing together personal and unpublished testimonies.

These gripping accounts are shared in today’s interviews and are featured alongside hours of well-curated archival material. But otherwise there is no authoritative narrator or commentary, with director James Bluemel preferring to emphasize the interpretation reflections of outside experts. The result is a comprehensive story that is as informative as one would expect but also emotional, engaging, and introspective.

Underpinning the series is the finely tuned balance required by such a delicate subject. We hear “from all sides” – from ex-IRA recruits to a UDA bomber and a British soldier. Most, however, are civilians from across the divide, many of whose families have been devastated by the paramilitaries and the brutal control they have imposed on people’s lives.

There’s balance too in how the show alternates between pivotal moments and revisits day-to-day existence amid the cycle of bloodshed and brutality. The footage of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, of the hunger strikes in the Maze prison and the memories of loved ones being callously executed are heartbreaking. So are the accounts of what has become “normal”: shots of children being escorted to school by the military, people trampling rubble while shopping, residential streets burning in spontaneous riots.

Occasionally the light cuts through the dark – the tales of love and culture that flourish at the non-partisan Harp’s bar are beautifully poignant – but the overriding feeling is that the horror has become mundane and the people fatalistic. It was a time and place where “life meant nothing,” as one contributor recalled.

The series never loses sight of the immense human cost. The trauma, the pain, the shame transcend all tribal lines and binary oppositions. Some justify what they felt they had to do, but the collective feeling of pain and regret about what happened is palpable.

The documentary neither redeems nor exonerates, but offers its subjects the opportunity to work through their hitherto fiercely guarded emotions. With more people having died by suicide in Northern Ireland since 1998 than killed during the Troubles (partly attributed to lingering trauma), it is hard to overstate the importance of a project such as this in encouraging open discussion about a past that remains raw . Once upon a time it is, therefore, vitally important for those involved and necessary insight for those who were not.

★★★★★

On BBC2 from 22 May at 9pm and on BBC iPlayer

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