A scene from Omagh, one of two Paul Greengrass dramas about the Irish conflict
BBC2 has just commissioned a major drama about "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland starring James Nesbitt, and possibly Liam Neeson. The one-off, Five Minutes of Heaven, will dramatise the conviction in 1975 of 17-year-old Alistair Little, a member of the UVF, who killed a 19-year-old Catholic Jim Griffin.
As is often the case, the best way into a potentially intractable Big Issue is through a smaller, more personal story - in this case, the impact of the murder on Griffin's family. Writer Guy Hibbert, who did such a strong job with Channel 4's Omagh, has worked closely with the individuals involved in the story. This is an area where no writer or director wants to make too much up as the wounds are still too raw. Unsurprisingly, Hibbert has said that the process of writing Five Minutes of Heaven provided "no easy answers." This is a recurring theme with dramas on this subject.
Paul Greengrass, the English-born director who made Bloody Sunday for Granada, one of the most celebrated dramas set during the Troubles, said that it was easier to get it made because of the Good Friday Agreement: "I made that film at the height of optimism." Which begs the question: has the conflict been easier to face - both by Irish audiences and those of us on what used insensitively to be called "the mainland" - since the pledge was signed by all parties on 10 April 1998 to stick to "exclusively peaceful and democratic means"? In which case, is this a rerun of Hollywood's delayed response to the Vietnam war?
The Troubles have cropped up a lot on TV since that key date in 1998. Bloody Sunday was made for and shown on ITV in 2002 but also given a cinematic release (the ultimate compliment for a TV film). Due to unhappy coincidence, Sunday, Channel 4's "rival" dramatisation of the Bloody Sunday shootings of January 30 1972, aired a week later. (Both were scheduled to mark the anniversary, and C4's linked with a live studio debate.) It seemed ironic that a key flashpoint of the 30-year conflict should create further rivalry, albeit less bloody, and between TV writers and producers. The outspoken Jimmy McGovern, who wrote Sunday, made fewer concessions to balance and concentrated on the families of those civilians killed, with the British Army boil-in-the-bag villains. Bloody Sunday concentrated on protestant march leader Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt), giving it a more neutral axis, and was not shy of suggesting opportunism within the IRA ranks. I thought both films were excellent, but McGovern's - lost in Bloody Sunday's slipstream - had the dramatic edge.
Despite the sensitivity of the subject, Play For Today covered the issue in the 1970s (Colin Welland's Your Man From Six Counties; Derek Mahon's Shadows on our Skin, both concentrating on children's stories), and other one-off BBC dramas followed. In 1985, Alan Clarke looked at the tension of life for British soldiers in Armagh in Contact, and Mike Leigh compared a Catholic and Protestant couple in Belfast in Four Days in July. But as Lance Pettitt wrote in the book Screening Ireland, "most Troubles drama skirted round the representation of paramilitaries." That would have to wait until after Good Friday.
The fact is, you're never going to reach a consensus in a drama about such a deeply-rooted historical conflict, especially not when our own government was involved. Do as Ken Loach did with his sympathetic film about Irish resistance in the 1920s and the Daily Mail will call you "anti-British". (Not that Ken Loach cares about that, I shouldn't imagine.) Five Minutes of Heaven producer Stephen Wright said his film is "not about finding a resolution or a happy ending. What we are attempting to achieve, in a balanced way, is to create a place where both men can tell their individual stories."
To echo the Good Friday Agreement, film-making certainly seems to be a "peaceful means" of settling old scores in the post-Troubles climate, but it would be a shame if the need to be "democratic" took all the bite of any drama. Sometimes drama has to take sides.
