Ireland is a place that has always fascinated me from a young age. It is a place filled with history and culture, swirling with the passions and contradictions that history, in general, is only too filled with.
"Story of Ireland" is the BBC's version of Ireland's history. Like America's PBS, the BBC, through host Fergal Keane, tells a "warts and all" story of Ireland, filled with complex characters with equally complex, and often times contradictory, motivations.
Ireland is at once colonial and post colonial, its people today are divided on political, economic, and even cultural lines, struggling with a long and painful history of oppression and exploitation. They are increasingly globalist, in a world that has sadly become less so.
History, when taught right, helps develop greater empathy for one another, even those who we may otherwise and profoundly disagree with.
Far from being an idyllic oasis, Ireland has always been filled with loud and controversial meetings and goings, of peoples interacting, and often fighting, with one another. And like all other island peoples (including their next door neighbors), the Irish continue to voyage, filled with all the challenges, complexities, and possibilities that voyage entails.
Overall Rating: 8.5/10.
