Rebellion

Beautifully made. But they replaced three perfectly good female characters with three others, while keeping many of the other (male?!) players in situ for season 2. Not only did this complicate and confuse but frankly dissolved my enthusiasm. I think it undermines the story itself, since everything other than the headlines are fictional.

This is a very pretty, but confused telling of the 1914-1922 period in Ireland. There are too many characters who look and talk the same, and have little to distinguish them.

More significantly, we are given no idea that in the decades leading up to 1914 there actually were three different factions in Ireland with regard to the country's membership in or relationship to the United Kingdom:-

• Home Rule campaigners: they were the dominant political movement in Ireland. They looked to have the Irish Parliament reestablished in Dublin, as it had been prior to 1801. This initiative was finally passed by the Parliament in Westminster in 1913-1914, and would have been put in force had it not been for the outbreak of war in August 1914.

• Irish Republicans, or so-called Fenians: this was a small but vociferous minority that sought withdrawal from the UK and a total break from Great Britain. Unlike the Home Rulers, the Republicans preached armed revolution. ('Rebellion' suggests that this was the main independence faction in Ireland, but it most certainly was not.)

-The Unionists, who regarded Ireland as 'West Britain' and wanted no autonomy for Ireland at all.

With regard to the last, it's notable that this TV series leaves out the essential fact that rebellion in Ireland was initiated not by the Republicans but by the Unionists.

In 1914, just before Home Rule was to be put in effect, Unionist officers in the Curragh Barracks in Dublin declared themselves in defiance of the British government and readied for armed revolt. This so-called Curragh Mutiny was defused by the outbreak of the Great War. But it's crucial to know that it was senior British officers in Ireland, not Republicans or Home Rulers, who first rebelled and set the stage for the civil wars that followed. Without this backstory, the events set forth in 'Rebellion' really make no sense.

I am from Northern Ireland, so I have to declare an interest in watching this series. After what I felt was a shaky start, I found myself being drawn into the personalities and the events. Episode by episode it seemed to improve. The sets and characterisations were convincing. If there is the odd historical inaccuracy well, this is not a documentary, it is entertainment ... and in that it succeeds.

The most important things to know about the Easter Rising were that it marked the return to violent rebellion in Ireland and the way that the English dealt with it started the turning the sympathies of the Irish at large against the English and the idea of home-rule as part of the Empire. Those two things are very well demonstrated in Rebellion, from the brutal dealing of the British military with both the rebellion and Irish civilians, the complete lack of due process for those arrested and executed, creating martyrs and setting the stage for the War of Independence and the Irish Civil War.

Has anyone else noticed ? I'm enjoying it as a history lesson that was never even mentioned in school when I was growing up in Liverpool. Strange, because half the population was Irish (as was my own Grandmother). Strange too, because it's only now that I'm learning that the English aristocracy treated the peasants in much the same way as they treated the natives in their colonies. We in Liverpool were too busy trying to eke out a life to be concerned with what was going on in the rest of the dominion. But as I get older and see what mentality drove that same aristocracy, then I have no boundaries for my distaste for them. First of all they take all of the land, then they take all of the resources the land has to offer, then they sequester the crops, then they charge rents for the properties they've stolen. You want more? They call you up to fight their battles for them.

Even that's not enough, they lay ownership to all of the wildlife, birds, beasts, fish and fowl, and pass laws that allow for beatings and execution for any transgressions. Then they turn their attention to the winsome young lasses who grow up in the villages and decide that they should have the right to be the first one to screw them if they so desire.

All of this without a peep of protest to be countenanced............ no wonder the peasants got mad and rebelled.

It's not stellar stuff but it's interesting enough to keep you watching.

I can't get over how I've suddenly realised that there is something that can be called an "Irish" face.