Journalists who covered Northern Ireland during the Troubles used to tell a story, possibly apocryphal, about gaggles of children that would trail after camera crews filming on the Falls Road. “Hey, mister,” they would shout out, “do you fancy a soundbite?”
The anecdote was a wry admission that the conflict had reached media saturation and that local people had become all too media savvy. Some riots had a staged, theatrical quality. Coverage of the Troubles became a blur of burning cars, shootings and funerals. For outsiders, it was all rather incomprehensible.
Now, a quarter of a century after the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles, a documentary series has scraped away the familiar narratives and rote explanations and propaganda to show what it was really like for those who lived it. Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is a “deeply human, lyrical and profound story,” said the Guardian review. “The most magnificent documentary series ever made about this place because it lets ordinary people, who lived through extraordinary times, deliver their testimony,” said the Belfast Telegraph. “This is journalism at its finest; this is history unsanitised; this is our story.”
The five-part BBC series, which has won near-universal accolades since it started airing in May, was directed by James Bluemel, a Londoner, and is the follow-up to his equally acclaimed 2020 documentary Once Upon a Time in Iraq.
His time in Baghdad stirred curiosity about the conflict closer to home, Bluemel said in an interview. “You would hear these really familiar terms and sectarian attitudes. It reminded me a lot about what I used to hear about Northern Ireland on the news when I was growing up. I understood the broad politics but there was a gap. From being in Britain, I think it felt like it was between Protestants and Catholics and had nothing to do with us. I didn’t know what it felt like for people to live through it.”
The resulting documentary landed at a delicate time. Loyalist anger at post-Brexit trading arrangements has given extra edge to the summer marching season. A Democratic Unionist party (DUP) boycott of power-sharing has created a political vacuum. Controversial legislation that offers conditional amnesty to those who killed and maimed during the Troubles is expected soon to become law. The lack of an agreed narrative about the past fuels polarisation and political recrimination.
Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland has sidestepped stereotypes and whataboutery by weaving unfiltered personal accounts from all sides with archive footage. There was Kate Nash, whose brother was killed by soldiers on Bloody Sunday. Michael McConville spoke of the IRA abducting his mother and concealing her murder, and body, for decades. A working-class Protestant spoke of being propelled into a loyalist death squad. The interviewees, some speaking publicly for the first time, shared still-raw memories and insights.
“The worry is that these stories don’t get talked about, or they get talked about only from entrenched, embedded positions, which can then be used to promote a certain ideology,” said Bluemel.
Some interviewees found the process therapeutic. Denise Simpson said that as teenagers she and her brother hid from friends and neighbours that their mother served in the Ulster Defence Regiment, part of the British army, lest it made her a target. “We were always terrified of slipping up. You could get your mum killed, so we didn’t talk about it. It was very intense.”
Participating in the documentary uncorked suppressed emotions and let the family tell its story for the first time, said Simpson. Watching the series, she found herself empathising with other interviewees, even republicans. “I thought flip me, I thought we had it tough.”
It also led to a warm encounter – off camera, not part of the documentary – with the interviewees Ricky O’Rawe, an ex-IRA member, and his wife, Bernadette. “He put his arm around me,” said Simpson. “I thought, never in a million years, I’m here with an IRA man, a hunger striker. It took my brain some time to catch up.”
Bluemel, who won a Bafta for a 2017 documentary on Syrian refugees, expressed optimism that Northern Ireland would continue to enjoy peace and relative stability despite sporadic tension. “There are little pockets of factions that are trying to rattle the cage again but they can’t muster the numbers. There is a far bigger swell of people that has achieved something remarkable that very few post-conflict societies have achieved.”
However, he was scathing about Brexit’s impact on the spirit and institutions of the Good Friday agreement. “It seems particularly shortsighted and frankly stupid to wreck an incredibly complex peace process over something which is an internal battle in the Tory party.”
Bluemel spoke via a video call from a rural Albanian village where he was working on a new documentary - he is executive producing, not directing – about people preparing to make the perilous journey to Britain. One of them was a young honey maker who saw no future in his decaying community.
“We want to show exactly why people are leaving, what sort of people are leaving, and the reception they’ll get,” said Bluemel. He flipped his phone to reveal a sun-bleached, craggy landscape dotted with stone houses. It did not look like a place for soundbites.
• The final episode of Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is on BBC Two on 11 June. All episodes are available now on iPlayer
