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.

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.

Superb cast and production value, with adequate direction severely undermined by character and plot disconnects between the two seasons. Why in heaven's name were more than half the strong players and storylines of season 1 disgarded for season 2? Pivotal, well drawn characters simply disappeared into an Irish fog. Obviously some producer or writer decided to fix what was not broken. Nevertheless Gleason is marvelous carrying the the disjointed storyline through the final season.

I am 85, I was not there, but met Irish (Republic) people in 1949 in Bradford UK, who had relatives alive and emotionally in this historic event. I was 18 (and from a small community) I was forever imbued by the emotions I witnessed, and the varied descriptions. The programme literally had me saying prayers, I was captivated, excited and horrified with the poverty depicted, which I was personally familiar with, being moved about during the WW11. This is a highly enthralling programme, I was very disappointed to learn that episode 5 is the last one. For me the realism was total, the emotions entirely believable. Casting and acting magnificent. I watched the 5 episodes on Netflix.

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.