Rebellion

surfteach

When I saw the ad for this series, I was hopeful that it would do a good job with an incredibly interesting piece of Irish history. Being Irish/American, I have visited Ireland 10 times and I am a keen student of Irish history. I have been to all of the locations where the 1916 rebellion occurred and stood in the jail cells and at the location of the executions. I also attended a lecture tour by a Trinity College professor through the streets of Dublin including Glasnevin Cemetery where I met the grandson of one of Michael Collins assassination squad members. So I find it remarkable how people can make a picture like this and choose to rewrite the history in ways that do little to enhance the story, when the actual story is more interesting. An example is the story of Elizabeth O' Farrell . Her real story is much more interesting than the distorted soap opera they made of this remarkable woman. There are some saving graces in the series such as the very fine acting by Brian Gleeson, Charlie Murphy, and Barry Ward to name a few. There was also some effective use of the actual locations in Dublin. The combat scenes were well done and at times very powerful. However, too much of the narrative was spent on meaningless story lines like the wastrel brother of Elizabeth or the pregnancy of May, while diluting the most important elements of the actual story. People like Eamon DeValera and are poorly fleshed out and many of the other principal leaders are left out for the sake of tedious love stories and other inane side stories. They had five episodes to portray one of the most important events in modern Irish history and all they made was this glossy soap opera. The film Michael Collins which also contained historical inaccuracies was a much better effort, helped I suspect by having an Irish director. Better luck next times guys with this story.

score 6/10

surfteach 29 June 2016

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3496162/