YOU might expect a reporter to begin a documentary with a question, and Peter Taylor: Ireland After Partition (BBC2, Monday, 9pm), has a suitably intriguing one.
“Why,” he asks, “is an Englishman still looking at the Irish question after he’s been studying it, following it, reporting it, for 50 years? The answer is because the Irish question has never been resolved.”
With that he embarks on an hour-long film that is as much a glowing testament to his work as a journalist, as it is a history of Ireland in the century since partition. As we see from archive footage and interviews past and recent, the This Week and Panorama reporter knew all the key protagonists, and got them to talk on camera too (no mean achievement considering his contacts included paramilitaries and MI6 agents).
He started covering Northern Ireland in 1972, and for one of his first films he invited a Hull bus driver and his wife to spend a week in Belfast. Taylor had met Tom while trying to gauge what mainland Britain was making of “the Troubles”. Tom was in favour of bringing the British army home and leaving the locals to it. Would he feel the same if he went there, Taylor wondered, and the idea for Busman’s Holiday was born.
Tom and Doris were shocked at the Belfast they saw, with bricked up houses, soldiers on the streets and watchtowers on the corners. “You’ve to see it to believe it,” says Doris. The three visit the scene of a shop bombing. This time it is Tom’s turn to be amazed and bewildered that such events were considered routine. “If this had happened in Hull the Daily Mail would have been full of it for a year,” says Tom. “I’ve just been talking to a policeman and he said it’s one of those things. One of those things!”
By the end of the week Tom has changed his mind completely, feeling it would be wrong for Britain to walk away.
In another early film, a group of Protestant and Catholic children from Belfast went on holiday to Wales together. Left to their own devices, barriers soon broke down and a great time was had by all. Then came the time to go home. One of the boys said he had made some great new pals but he would not be seeing them again. “It would be too dangerous to have Protestant friends,” he says.
Taylor has a gift for reducing political questions to the basics, but he also understands the complexities. This was essential when it came to making sense of the various peace initiatives that took place, eventually leading to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Having met some of those who had taken part in murders down the years – a clip from a sit-down with one matter of fact killer is enough to chill the blood – Taylor appreciated the value of peace, and the cost of putting it in peril.
Impeccably even-handed and graced with insight borne of long experience, this is one of the best attempts to answer the “Irish question” you are likely to see this centenary year. Especially pertinent, too, in these post-Brexit days.
A certain football tournament is everywhere next week, but if you don’t fancy that (or it all goes horribly wrong for Scotland early doors), there is Discovering Sci-Fi on Film (Sky Arts, Thursday, 10pm). Ian Nathan, author and contributing editor of Empire, and fellow critics Stephen Armstrong and Neil Norman, count down their top 25 picks from Things to Come in 1936 to ET and Terminator.
Now for something else completely different from the football: a Covid era relationship drama. No, please, don’t run away screaming. This one has a lot going for it, starting with the fact it stars James McAvoy and Sharon Horgan as a couple struggling to cope with lockdown and each other.
You may have seen the trailers for Together (BBC2, Thursday, 9pm), with the pair firing acid barbs at each other like a noughties Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in The War of the Roses.
If it sweetens the pill any, Stephen Daldry (The Crown, Billy Elliot) is directing and Dennis Kelly (Utopia, Pulling) is in charge of the words, and most importantly the gags.
“I think everyone who got involved in this film had no intention of doing a Covid drama but then we read Dennis’s script and changed our minds,” says Horgan.
A final mention in dispatches for The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC1, Wednesday, 9pm) which next week reaches the end of its latest run.
After last week’s semi-final the last three stitchers remaining – spoiler alert – include Serena, a medical student from Glasgow and, at 21, this year’s youngest contestant.
One way or another you might find yourself cheering Scotland on next week. Good luck to all - especially McAvoy and Horgan’s warring pair.
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