The Promise (2011 TV serial)
Encyclopedia
The Promise is a British
television serial in four episodes written and directed by Peter Kosminsky
, with music by Debbie Wiseman
, which premiered on 6 February 2011 on Channel 4
. It deals with a young woman going to Israel
/Palestine
in the present day, using her visit to investigate her soldier grandfather's part in the post-war phase of the British Mandate of Palestine
.
, Kosminsky's sympathetic portrayal of British troops trying to carry through a peacekeeping
mission in central Bosnia in 1992–93
, their hands tied by an impossible mandate. A former soldier wrote to the programme's executive producer Jane Tranter
at the BBC, complimenting her on the drama, before adding "You should do a film about the British soldiers who were in Palestine. No one remembers us."
Tranter passed the letter to Kosminsky, who initially put it to one side. However, after completing The Project
in 2002, Kosminsky presented the subject to the BBC as a possible theme for a future drama, and the BBC agreed to support research on it. The BBC's Sarah Barton, subsequently assisted by Sarah MacFarlane, began making contacts through regimental groups and the Palestine Veterans Association; then by telephone interviews and finally face-to-face, also attending the veterans' annual reunion at Eden Camp
and slowly gaining their collective confidence; ultimately conducting detailed interviews with 82 veterans, some of them in their eighties, many of them speaking about things they had never felt able to tell even their wives and families. Many of the interviews were spread over several days, and some ran to hundreds of pages. At the same time, the oral accounts were compared with archive material from books and records of the Red Cross, the The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum
, including the full run of weekly military intelligence situation digests. As the research continued, Kosminsky was particularly struck by the house demolitions carried out by the British, and began to wonder what other parallels that might exist with the present; so towards the end of this phase the research team also made contact with newly-emerging groups of critical IDF veterans, Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace
. According to Kosminsky, it took him 11 months simply to read all the research, including transcripts, archives, diaries, military reports and over 40 books that the researchers had prepared for him, while thinking how to distill it into a workable dramatic form.
The character of Erin was influenced by his two teenage daughters, one of whom has epilepsy. Kosminsky felt the trait wasn't often shown on screen unless it was a major plot point, so he liked the idea of showing "an eighteen-year old girl who is trying to live a normal life, despite the fact she occasionally had epileptic fits; and how other people cope with that as well". For personal reasons, Kosminsky had long wanted to explore the idea of a young person gradually coming to appreciate "the young man inside the shell of an older, sick man", to the extent that he sees the drama as an unconventional love story, capped when Paul tells Erin that the young Len of the diary no longer exists. Erin's passionate response, "He does to me, he does to me!" was for Kosminsky perhaps the most important line in the whole film. The casual relationship Erin has with Eliza, "the way they talk, the way they react, their limited attention span" was very much drawn from his experience of his daughters and their friends; and he felt that the combination of naivety and flinty assertiveness were not atypical of an "eighteen-year-old kid from London", particularly given an emotionally rather unsympathetic upbringing. Dramatically, it was also important to make the character contrast with the "endlessly heroic and gentlemanly" Len. So it was intentional that initially she should be harder to like (though perhaps not the reaction from Twitter that she was impossible to like). However, he hoped that the audience would be won over as they came to better know the character, and that initially undercutting her in this way and having the audience make this journey would make more powerful what he saw as her bravery and single-mindedness in the later episodes.
Erin's emotional journey intentionally parallels the 1940s arc, because at the heart of it is her increasing engagement with Len. "She becomes obsessed with him... she feels what he's feeling... so, by the time we get to Gaza, she patterns herself on what she thinks he would have done." Through the modern story, Kosminsky says that he wants to show how the past can have consequences for the present, and that having left "chaos, political confusion, bloodshed and war", Britain has a responsibility for what happens today. "It is our problem, at least in part, and we should take some responsibility for it". Coupled with this he writes that what has struck him most is a question: "How did we get from there to here?" In 1945 the Jewish plight had the sympathy of most of the world, but "just 60 years later, Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future. How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime?" This is what The Promise sets out to explore. But he is not offering any easy answers: rather he seeks to make more understandable and human the complexity of the situation. "It does not help anyone by claiming that good and justice are on one side only. If it were that simple, we would have already found a solution. There are rights and truths on each side, that compete with each other. You can not have everything on one side or the other, everything is meshed together" ... "There are no good guys and bad guys in this sad situation and we have tried very hard to show pluses and minuses on both sides." "I would be very sad if someone were to consider the series as partisan." But rather than present an impossible perfect balance, what he hoped to create in the drama was more a kind of unstable equilibrium, so that audiences would find their sympathies shifting, repeatedly, from one side to the other.
, best known as makers of the Poirot
series for ITV. However, Kosminsky had grown increasingly estranged from the BBC, later saying that film-makers no longer saw "that flash of mischief" when pitching ideas. "I don't think we can say the BBC bottled it... [However] it seems to have lost its nerve for making challenging drama... drama that gets it into political and legal hot water." The BBC agreed to sell its interest and let the project go into turnaround — for a generously low rate according to Kosminsky — and in 2007 Kosminsky entered into an exclusive deal with Daybreak Pictures, run by Channel 4's former head of film David Aukin
, with whom he had previously made The Government Inspector
(2005) and Britz
(2007).
At this stage the project existed as a detailed treatment
which ran to 180 pages, with many scenes described in considerable detail. Several researchers continued to conduct interviews, looking for telling details to further enrich particular aspects of the story. Kosminsky also flew to Israel with David Aukin, where they were able to visit the real-life places that would be featured in the story, including the normally closed-off Deir Yassin
, accompanied each day by a different modern Israeli historian specialising in the period, organised by their Israeli pre-production partners, an Israeli documentary film company. Benny Morris
let Kosminsky read a pre-publication proof copy
of his book 1948; and from a recent PhD student of Motti Golani at Haifa University Kosminsky heard about the city hospitality clubs, still sixty years on a stigmatised subject, which shaped the background for Clara in the story. Scripts followed quickly, and by mid-2008 Channel 4 publicly announced its backing for the project.
Daybreak had initially costed the drama at £8 million, which with some trimming of a few scenes they had been able to pare back to £7 million. Channel 4 committed £4 million to the budget, roughly in line with the channel's hourly rate for prestige drama. Other sources of funding were more difficult. In France, a deal giving Canal + first-run subscription broadcast rights, with free-to-air
rights on ARTE
a year later, was negotiated by Daybreak's long-standing existing production contact Georges Campana, bringing in a further £1 million. SBS
(a frequent co-producer with ARTE) secured Australian rights, and some top-up funding was obtained from the E.U. media fund. However pre-sale negotiations for America and Germany, while cordial, proved slow, and finally ran into the sand. Eventually, having put back filming from an original autumn 2009 intended start, and with everything else in place and ready to go, Kosminsky went back to Channel 4 and laid it on the line – without another £1 million the series simply wasn't going to happen. Exceptionally, Channel 4 gave the extra funding the green light, and filming finally started in Israel in early 2010 under the revised title Homeland, beginning with the period scenes set at Stella Maris. Channel 4 presented its support as part of a £20 million investment in drama, also including This is England '86
and Any Human Heart
, made possible by cancellation of the £50 million per series it was previously spending on Big Brother
.
, Tel Aviv
, Jaffa
, Caesarea, Acre
, Givat Brenner
, Ein Hod
, Peqi'in, Ramla
and Beit Gemal in a 68 day schedule involving 180 separate different locations. Ben Gurion Airport stood in for Heathrow, and the bombed rubble of the King David Hotel
was filmed against a blue screen in a car park in Petach Tikva. Part of the Old City in Jerusalem stood in for Nablus
in the West Bank, the Hebron-set scenes were filmed in Acre, while Gaza was represented by Jisr al-Zarqa, "reputed to be the poorest town in Israel" according to Kosminsky. The paratroopers' base at Stella Maris
had been a challenge to find, but eventually the monastery at Beit Gemal was used and proved very accommodating. Period military vehicles were also a challenge to source without shipping them in at prohibitive expense; the tracked armoured vehicle used in the series was an amalgam of parts from five different vehicles found in a junkyard, cobbled together into one that worked.
Filming used conventional Super 16mm film, which was then processed and edited in England. The cinematographer, David Higgs, had been keen to try the new Red One high resolution digital camera. However, the team were concerned by potentially limited contrast ratio
using digital – a serious consideration in the strong Mediterranean light; and that its potential bulkiness might inhibit Kosminsky's trademark extensive use of hand-held
camera to follow the action. It was also felt that relying on comparatively simple well-known technology would be a good idea when operating so far from home. Ironically, however, the reliance on film led to a number of scenes having to be re-mounted after film fogging
went undetected for a whole week when it was impossible to get daily film rushes
back to London because of the air travel disruption
caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull
volcano in Iceland. Extensive use was also made of CGI
and digital post-production
, which was by no means limited to the café explosion, the destruction at the King David Hotel, and the refugee ship of would-be immigrants. A particular challenge was how to realise the events at Bergen-Belsen. The film-makers considered and rejected a number of options, including live-action and CGI, before reluctantly deciding to fall back on archive black-and-white library footage provided by the Imperial War Museum
in London, only to come to the view that the resulting sequence had more artistic and moral power than anything they might ever have been able to create in its stead.
The first episode was reviewed widely and generally received a very positive initial notice,
John Crace
, TV review, The Guardian
, 7 February 2011. "It's that rarest of TV beasts: a show that doesn't patronise its audience, (mostly) steers clear of cliches and trusts the characters to tell the story in their own time."
Andrew Billen, Weekend TV: The Promise, The Times
, 7 February 2011. "formidable". (paywalled).
James Walton, Review, The Daily Telegraph
, 7 February 2011. "will richly deserve any gongs that come its way".
Matt Baylis, "Burning Bush of Genius", Daily Express
, 7 February 2011, Page 39; also quoted by Broadcast, 7 February 2011. “This four-parter is a little burning bush of genius in the desert of well-intentioned TV dramas.”
Caitlin Moran
, TV column, The Times
, 12 February 2010. "almost certainly the best drama of the year". (paywalled).
James Delingpole
, Grandfather's footsteps, The Spectator
, 12 February 2011
Hugh Montogomery, The Promise, Independent on Sunday, 13 February 2011. "[In the 1940s sequences,] Kosminsky balanced the demands of big-picture history and intimate human drama with a quite remarkable assurance. Contrastingly, the modern-day storyline was hobbled by an inertia that seemed at odds with its tumultuous subject matter."
although Andrew Anthony
in The Observer
was more critical and A.A. Gill, writing in the The Sunday Times
, was unimpressed.
The Daily Express
called it “...a little burning bush of genius in the desert of well-intentioned TV dramas...”, The Daily Telegraph
said the programme would richly deserve any Baftas that came its way, and Caitlin Moran
in The Times
called it "almost certainly the best drama of the year". By the second episode Andrew Billen, writing in The Times, was concerned that both Len and Erin were meeting from the Arabs a "little too much kindness for the comfort of all of us hoping that Kosminsky will parcel out recriminations in exactly equal proportions"; but nonetheless applauded the "immersive and emotional" quality of the series.
The serial as a whole was praised by Christina Patterson in The Independent
who said it was “...beautifully shot and extremely well written. It is also extremely balanced...”;
and Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman
and The Observer
, where she said it was “...the best thing you are likely to see on TV this year, if not this decade.”
There was also praise from Stephen Kelly in Tribune
,
Harriet Sherwood and Ian Black, Jerusalem correspondent and Middle East editor of The Guardian
respectively,
and David Chater, previewing the serial for The Times, who called it courageous and applauded its lack of didacticism.
London free newspaper Metro felt that the third episode dragged, having warmly received the first two parts; but then praised the series as a whole.
Previewing the final episode, The Times said it was "ambitious" and "packs a considerable punch";
Time Out chose the programme as its pick of the day, and gave it a four-star recommendation, calling it "brave filmmaking and a brave, entirely successful commission".
Andrew Anthony in The Observer
acknowledged some flaws, but found it still "an exceptional drama".
A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London, however, condemned the drama to The Jewish Chronicle
as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel". The Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies of British Jews
both also lodged letters of complaint.
The Jewish Chronicle itself took the view that rather than "attempt to tell both sides of what is a complex and contentious story", the series had turned out to be "a depressing study in how to select historical facts to convey a politically loaded message". Writing in The Independent, novelist Howard Jacobson
said that in The Promise "Just about every Palestinian was sympathetic to look at, just about every Jew was not. While most Palestinians might fairly be depicted as living in poor circumstances, most Israeli Jews might not be fairly depicted as living in great wealth... Though I, too, have found Palestinians to be people of immense charm, I could only laugh in derision at The Promise every time another shot of soft-eyed Palestinians followed another shot of hard-faced Jews." In an interview with Jacobson during Jewish Book Week 2011, Jonathan Freedland
, having seen the first episode of The Promise, said Kosminsky used antisemitic tropes, misrepresenting Israel and Zionism as being a consequence of the Holocaust, whose imagery he had abused. Historian, Professor David Cesarani
, accused Kosminsky of "deceit...massive historical distortion": omitting the Balfour Declaration's promise of a Jewish national home; downplaying selfish British geo-strategy; and exculpating the British, "chief architects of the Palestine tragedy...making responsible...only the Jews"; turning a tricorn conflict of British, Arabs and Jews "into a one-sided rant." On the other hand, Liel Leibovitz, writing for American online Jewish magazine Tablet
, took the view that, "contrary to these howls of discontent, the show is a rare and riveting example of telling Israel’s story on screen with accuracy, sensitivity, and courage".
The broadcasting regulator Ofcom
received 44 complaints about the series, but Ofcom concluded in a 10-page report that the series did not breach its code of conduct. Viewers complained that the drama, about British Mandate Palestine and its legacy, was antisemitic, used upsetting footage of concentration camps, incited racial hatred, was biased against Israel and presented historical inaccuracies. But, Ofcom said: "Just because some individual Jewish and Israeli characters were portrayed in a negative light does not mean the programme was, or was intended to be, antisemitic... Just as there were Jewish/Israeli characters that could be seen in a negative light, so there were British and Palestinian characters that could also be seen in a negative light." Delivering his first keynote speech to the Royal Television Society
in London on 23 May 2011, David Abraham
, the Chief Executive of Channel 4, said: "At a time when other broadcasters are perhaps more conservative, it's more important than ever for Channel 4 to challenge the status quo, stimulate debate, take risks and be brave... I can think of no better example of how we continue to do that than in Peter Kosminsky's recent examination of the Israel/Palestine question in The Promise."
The Promise was nominated for the British Academy Television Awards 2011
in the category of best drama serial but was beaten by another production broadcast on Channel 4, the TV adaptation of William Boyd
's Any Human Heart
. Interviewed in The Jewish Chronicle, Any Human Heart's director, Michael Samuels
, said about The Promise, "I respect it for having a point of view. You have to have that, otherwise you are not writing".
The Promise also received a nomination, at the Banff World Television Festival, for Best Mini-Series of 2010/2011. On 10 May 2011, at the One World Media Awards in London, The Promise won Best Drama of 2010/11.
aired the drama under the title The Promise: Le Serment over four weeks starting on 21 March 2011, in a prime-time Monday evening slot that it tends to use for more serious or historical drama series. Libération
called it "admirable", praising the "excellent director" for telling a "tragedy in two voices", while "pointing the finger at neither one side nor the other". Les Echos called it "exceptional, stunningly intelligent" and said the considered dialogue and tense, serious acting fully measured up to the ambition of the film.
TV magazine Télérama
called it "remarkable", confronting its subject "head on".
Le Figaro
said it was "magnificently filmed and masterfully acted... perfectly balanced... great television", and gave it a maximum rating of four stars out of four.
The Nouvel Obs and Le Journal du Dimanche
both identified the series as reflecting the viewpoint of the "British pro-Palestinian left", but the latter praised it as "nevertheless a historical fiction useful for understanding an intractable conflict", while the former commended its "epic spirit, rare on television". Le Monde
gave the series an enthusiastic preview in its TéléVisions supplement along with a lengthy interview with the director. Le Point
predicted Kosminsky would receive a "shower of awards...[a]nd also gibes". However, La Croix
s reviewer was more hostile, considering that although there was "no doubt that the film ought to be seen", it "cannot be mistaken for a history lesson but a great partisan fiction", marred by bias and an "embarrassing" representation of Jews".
L'Express
considered it beautiful but too long.
A letter of protest to the channel was written by the President of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF
), arguing that "the viewer sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however complex, only as a consequence of violence and cruelty of the Jews, who are represented as so extreme that if any empathy towards them is excluded." CRIF did not ask for the broadcast to be pulled, but rather to be balanced with a programme taking a different position, and for the fictional nature of the series to be made clear. The Jewish Chronicle (The JC)
reported that CRIF president Richard Prasquier
had met the president of Canal+, Bertrand Meheut. Prasquier reportedly told him that such a series "could only fan the flames of antisemitic violence" and Meheut reportedly promised that viewers would be provided with balanced information about the issue; The JC reported that Canal+ had agreed to broadcast a caption reading "The Promise is fiction" before each episode. The Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel (CJFAI) issued a call (publicised by CRIF) for a demonstration against the programme, which it described as "a vitriolic saga of murderous disinformation". The demonstration in front of the Canal+ offices on the night of the first showing was reported to have attracted a few hundred people, with CRIF represented by its vice-president. The Israeli embassy in Paris made no comment.
Arte
is expected to show the series in 2012.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
television serial in four episodes written and directed by Peter Kosminsky
Peter Kosminsky
Peter Kosminsky is a British writer, director and producer. He has directed Hollywood movies such as White Oleander and television films like Warriors, The Government Inspector and The Promise.- Biography :...
, with music by Debbie Wiseman
Debbie Wiseman
Debbie Wiseman MBE is a composer for film and television. She studied at Trinity College of Music Junior Department, and then piano and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama....
, which premiered on 6 February 2011 on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
. It deals with a young woman going to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
/Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in the present day, using her visit to investigate her soldier grandfather's part in the post-war phase of the British Mandate of Palestine
Mandate Palestine
Mandate Palestine existed while the British Mandate for Palestine, which formally began in September 1923 and terminated in May 1948, was in effect...
.
Cast
- Claire FoyClaire FoyClaire Foy is an English actress, best known for playing the title role in the BBC One production of Little Dorrit and Anna in the 2011 film, Season of the Witch.-Personal life:...
as Erin Matthews - Christian CookeChristian CookeChristian Louis Cooke is an English actor, known for playing Luke Kirkwall in Where the Heart Is, Luke Rutherford in Demons, Dorian Gaudain in Trinity, Freddie in Cemetery Junction and Len Matthews in the Channel 4 mini series The Promise.-Background:Cooke was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, where...
as Sergeant Leonard Matthews - Itay TiranItay TiranItay Tiran is an Israeli stage and screen actor, known for his position against Israeli settlements and for his roles in Forgiveness , Beaufort , The Debt , Homeland , Lebanon , and The Promise .Tiran is one of the most acclaimed Israeli actors of his day...
as Paul Meyer - Katharina Schüttler as Clara Rosenbaum
- Haaz SleimanHaaz Sleiman-Career:One of Sleiman's first roles was in the 2004 African-American gay comedy film The Ski Trip. He co-starred as undocumented Syrian immigrant Tarek in the critically acclaimed 2008 independent film The Visitor, a drama nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award and an Oscar, directed by Thomas...
as Omar Habash - Ali SulimanAli Suliman-Career:He starred in Paradise Now, which won the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film. In 2007, he appeared in the movie The Kingdom alongside Jamie Foxx. In the movie Lemon Tree he plays a lawyer, and the role of Omar Sadiki in the movie Body of Lies....
as Abu-Hassan Mohammed - Perdita WeeksPerdita WeeksPerdita Weeks is a British actress.-Biography:Perdita was born in South Glamorgan and studied art history at the Courtauld Institute.-Acting career:...
as Eliza Meyer - Ben MilesBen MilesBen Miles is an English actor, best known for his starring role as Patrick Maitland in the British TV comedy Coupling, from 2000 to 2004.-Life and career:...
as Max Meyer - Smadar Wolfman as Leah Meyer
- Holly Aird as Chris Matthews
- Hiam AbbassHiam AbbassHiam Abbass , also known as Hiam Abbas or Hiyam Abbas, is a Palestinian actress and an Arab citizen of Israel. She is known for her roles in the films Satin Rouge , Haifa , Paradise Now , The Syrian Bride , Free Zone , Dawn of the World , The Visitor , Lemon Tree , and Amreeka...
as Old Jawda - Lukas Gregorowicz as Captain Richard Rowntree
- Luke Allen-Gale as Corporal Jackie Clough
- Iain McKeeIain McKeeIain McKee is an English actor best known for his role as Frank Gadney in BBC1 drama series Lilies and Michael in BBC sitcom The Visit. He is originally from Bolton and now lives in North London, UK.-Filmography:...
as Sergeant Hugh Robbins - Paul Anderson as Sergeant Frank Nash
- Max Deacon as Private Alec Hyman
- Pip TorrensPip TorrensPip Torrens is an English actor.He was born in Bromley, Kent, England. He studied English Literature at Trinity College, Cambridge...
as Major John Arbuthnot
Subjects depicted in the serial
- British liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration campBergen-Belsen concentration campBergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...
- King David Hotel bombingKing David Hotel bombingThe King David Hotel bombing was an attack carried out by themilitant right-wing Zionist underground organization Irgun on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946...
- Ein HawdEin Hawd-External links:*, Archnet Digital Library....
and Ein HodEin HodEin Hod is a communal settlement in northern Israel. Located south of Mount Carmel and southeast of Haifa in northern Israel, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. In 2008 it had a population of 559....
villages - The Sergeants affairThe Sergeants affairThe Sergeants affair was an incident that took place in Mandate Palestine in July 1947 in which the Jewish underground group the Irgun kidnapped two British army Intelligence Corps NCOs, Sergeant Clifford Martin and Sergeant Mervyn Paice, and threatened to kill them if the death sentences passed...
- the kidnapping and murder of two British soldiers in Palestine - Israeli–Palestinian conflict in Hebron
- Deir Yassin massacreDeir Yassin massacreThe Deir Yassin massacre took place on April 9, 1948, when around 120 fighters from the Irgun Zevai Leumi and Lohamei Herut Israel Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, a Palestinian-Arab village of roughly 600 people...
- Battle of Haifa (1948)
- 1948 Palestinian exodus1948 Palestinian exodusThe 1948 Palestinian exodus , also known as the Nakba , occurred when approximately 711,000 to 725,000 Palestinian Arabs left, fled or were expelled from their homes, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the Civil War that preceded it. The exact number of refugees is a matter of dispute...
- Gaza–Israel conflict
- House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Research
The seed of the idea for The Promise came about in the wake of the 1999 drama WarriorsWarriors (TV series)
Warriors is a British television drama serial, written by Leigh Jackson, produced by Nigel Stafford-Clark and directed by Peter Kosminsky. It starred Matthew Macfadyen, Damian Lewis and Ioan Gruffudd. The music was written by Debbie Wiseman...
, Kosminsky's sympathetic portrayal of British troops trying to carry through a peacekeeping
Peacekeeping
Peacekeeping is an activity that aims to create the conditions for lasting peace. It is distinguished from both peacebuilding and peacemaking....
mission in central Bosnia in 1992–93
Bosnian War
The Bosnian War or the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995. The war involved several sides...
, their hands tied by an impossible mandate. A former soldier wrote to the programme's executive producer Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter is an English television executive who has been the executive vice-president of programming and production at BBC Worldwide's Los Angeles base since January 2009...
at the BBC, complimenting her on the drama, before adding "You should do a film about the British soldiers who were in Palestine. No one remembers us."
Tranter passed the letter to Kosminsky, who initially put it to one side. However, after completing The Project
The Project (2002 television programme)
The Project was a BBC two-part 2002 television drama, directed by Peter Kosminsky from a script by Leigh Jackson.The series presented a fictionalised account , seen through the experiences of three young activists, of developments in the Labour Party and its progress into Blairism, from the party's...
in 2002, Kosminsky presented the subject to the BBC as a possible theme for a future drama, and the BBC agreed to support research on it. The BBC's Sarah Barton, subsequently assisted by Sarah MacFarlane, began making contacts through regimental groups and the Palestine Veterans Association; then by telephone interviews and finally face-to-face, also attending the veterans' annual reunion at Eden Camp
Eden Camp Museum
Eden Camp Modern History Theme Museum is a large Second World War-related museum near Malton in North Yorkshire in England.It occupies a former Second World War prisoner-of-war camp of 33 huts. After the prisoners left, the camp was used for storage and then abandoned. Its grounds then became...
and slowly gaining their collective confidence; ultimately conducting detailed interviews with 82 veterans, some of them in their eighties, many of them speaking about things they had never felt able to tell even their wives and families. Many of the interviews were spread over several days, and some ran to hundreds of pages. At the same time, the oral accounts were compared with archive material from books and records of the Red Cross, the The National Archives and the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...
, including the full run of weekly military intelligence situation digests. As the research continued, Kosminsky was particularly struck by the house demolitions carried out by the British, and began to wonder what other parallels that might exist with the present; so towards the end of this phase the research team also made contact with newly-emerging groups of critical IDF veterans, Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace
Combatants for Peace
Combatants for Peace is a Bi-national movement of Israelis and Palestinians who lead a non-violent struggle against the occupation, and support a peaceful solution of two states for the two peoples: Israeli and Palestinian...
. According to Kosminsky, it took him 11 months simply to read all the research, including transcripts, archives, diaries, military reports and over 40 books that the researchers had prepared for him, while thinking how to distill it into a workable dramatic form.
Characters and construction
Rather than aiming to present the totality of events in 1946-48, Kosminsky says that his overriding aim for the drama was to present the experience of the 100,000 British soldiers who served in Palestine in the period, "to remind us all of what happened". After the exit from Palestine nobody had wanted to remember. The veterans had been "shunned"; they had "returned home to find the nation that wanted nothing to do with them", with no memorial, and been denied even "the right to march to the Cenotaph in formation". At the same time most of them had found it incredibly hard to talk about their experiences. "I was determined that their story be told." This was always his aim for the drama, to "honour the original letter sent to the BBC", so this was always going to be the path of Len's journey. Overwhelmingly, the veterans told a similar story: they had started out "incredibly pro-Jewish"; but, almost to a man, they had shifted their allegiance and by the end of their stay "were feeling a great deal of sympathy for the Arabs". "A big change came in the final months, as they saw what would happen to the Palestinians, and realised both sides were to be abandoned to a war." "It was always going to be necessary for us to faithfully reflect this in our drama," "I either had to reflect it or abandon the project." The series was led by what had come out of the interviews, what the soldiers had said and felt, and what they had actually experienced, rather than things such as British higher policy calculations, or the activities of the Haganah, with which the rank-and-file veterans had had little contact. Of all the subsequent reactions to the series, according to Kosminsky what had meant the most to him was a letter from a veteran, now 85 years old: "You did what you said you would. Thank you so much."The character of Erin was influenced by his two teenage daughters, one of whom has epilepsy. Kosminsky felt the trait wasn't often shown on screen unless it was a major plot point, so he liked the idea of showing "an eighteen-year old girl who is trying to live a normal life, despite the fact she occasionally had epileptic fits; and how other people cope with that as well". For personal reasons, Kosminsky had long wanted to explore the idea of a young person gradually coming to appreciate "the young man inside the shell of an older, sick man", to the extent that he sees the drama as an unconventional love story, capped when Paul tells Erin that the young Len of the diary no longer exists. Erin's passionate response, "He does to me, he does to me!" was for Kosminsky perhaps the most important line in the whole film. The casual relationship Erin has with Eliza, "the way they talk, the way they react, their limited attention span" was very much drawn from his experience of his daughters and their friends; and he felt that the combination of naivety and flinty assertiveness were not atypical of an "eighteen-year-old kid from London", particularly given an emotionally rather unsympathetic upbringing. Dramatically, it was also important to make the character contrast with the "endlessly heroic and gentlemanly" Len. So it was intentional that initially she should be harder to like (though perhaps not the reaction from Twitter that she was impossible to like). However, he hoped that the audience would be won over as they came to better know the character, and that initially undercutting her in this way and having the audience make this journey would make more powerful what he saw as her bravery and single-mindedness in the later episodes.
Erin's emotional journey intentionally parallels the 1940s arc, because at the heart of it is her increasing engagement with Len. "She becomes obsessed with him... she feels what he's feeling... so, by the time we get to Gaza, she patterns herself on what she thinks he would have done." Through the modern story, Kosminsky says that he wants to show how the past can have consequences for the present, and that having left "chaos, political confusion, bloodshed and war", Britain has a responsibility for what happens today. "It is our problem, at least in part, and we should take some responsibility for it". Coupled with this he writes that what has struck him most is a question: "How did we get from there to here?" In 1945 the Jewish plight had the sympathy of most of the world, but "just 60 years later, Israel is isolated, loathed and feared in equal measure by its neighbours, finding little sympathy outside America for its uncompromising view of how to defend its borders and secure its future. How did Israel squander the compassion of the world within a lifetime?" This is what The Promise sets out to explore. But he is not offering any easy answers: rather he seeks to make more understandable and human the complexity of the situation. "It does not help anyone by claiming that good and justice are on one side only. If it were that simple, we would have already found a solution. There are rights and truths on each side, that compete with each other. You can not have everything on one side or the other, everything is meshed together" ... "There are no good guys and bad guys in this sad situation and we have tried very hard to show pluses and minuses on both sides." "I would be very sad if someone were to consider the series as partisan." But rather than present an impossible perfect balance, what he hoped to create in the drama was more a kind of unstable equilibrium, so that audiences would find their sympathies shifting, repeatedly, from one side to the other.
Pre-production, further research, and finance
As of 2006 the project had the working title Palestine and was slated to be made for the BBC through Carnival FilmsCarnival Films
Carnival Films is a British television production company, founded by Brian Eastman in 1978 as Picture Partnership Productions Limited and run by Gareth Neame since 2005. The company swiftly built up a strong reputation as an independent production company of theatre, film and television drama...
, best known as makers of the Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot
Agatha Christie's Poirot is a British television drama that has aired on ITV since 1989. It stars David Suchet as Agatha Christie's fictional detective Hercule Poirot. It was originally made by LWT and is now made by ITV Studios...
series for ITV. However, Kosminsky had grown increasingly estranged from the BBC, later saying that film-makers no longer saw "that flash of mischief" when pitching ideas. "I don't think we can say the BBC bottled it... [However] it seems to have lost its nerve for making challenging drama... drama that gets it into political and legal hot water." The BBC agreed to sell its interest and let the project go into turnaround — for a generously low rate according to Kosminsky — and in 2007 Kosminsky entered into an exclusive deal with Daybreak Pictures, run by Channel 4's former head of film David Aukin
David Aukin
David Aukin is a theatrical and executive producer as well as a qualified solicitor. He has been nominated twice for British Academy Television Awards for producing films about Tony Blair: The Government Inspector in 2005 and The Trial of Tony Blair in 2007.- Biography :David Aukin was born in...
, with whom he had previously made The Government Inspector
The Government Inspector (television drama)
The Government Inspector is a 2005 television drama based on the life of Dr. David Kelly and the lead-up to the Iraq War in the United Kingdom...
(2005) and Britz
Britz
Britz is a German locality within the Berlin borough of Neukölln.-History:The village of Britzig was first mentioned in 1273. It was incorporated by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act...
(2007).
At this stage the project existed as a detailed treatment
Film treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
which ran to 180 pages, with many scenes described in considerable detail. Several researchers continued to conduct interviews, looking for telling details to further enrich particular aspects of the story. Kosminsky also flew to Israel with David Aukin, where they were able to visit the real-life places that would be featured in the story, including the normally closed-off Deir Yassin
Deir Yassin
Deir Yassin was a Palestinian Arab village of around 600 people near Jerusalem. It had declared its neutrality during the 1947–1948 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine between Arabs and Jews...
, accompanied each day by a different modern Israeli historian specialising in the period, organised by their Israeli pre-production partners, an Israeli documentary film company. Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris is professor of History in the Middle East Studies department of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in the city of Be'er Sheva, Israel...
let Kosminsky read a pre-publication proof copy
Galley proof
In printing and publishing, proofs are the preliminary versions of publications meant for review by authors, editors, and proofreaders, often with extra wide margins. Galley proofs may be uncut and unbound, or in some cases electronic...
of his book 1948; and from a recent PhD student of Motti Golani at Haifa University Kosminsky heard about the city hospitality clubs, still sixty years on a stigmatised subject, which shaped the background for Clara in the story. Scripts followed quickly, and by mid-2008 Channel 4 publicly announced its backing for the project.
Daybreak had initially costed the drama at £8 million, which with some trimming of a few scenes they had been able to pare back to £7 million. Channel 4 committed £4 million to the budget, roughly in line with the channel's hourly rate for prestige drama. Other sources of funding were more difficult. In France, a deal giving Canal + first-run subscription broadcast rights, with free-to-air
Free-to-air
Free-to-air describes television and radio services broadcast in clear form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription or one-off fee...
rights on ARTE
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
a year later, was negotiated by Daybreak's long-standing existing production contact Georges Campana, bringing in a further £1 million. SBS
Special Broadcasting Service
The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect...
(a frequent co-producer with ARTE) secured Australian rights, and some top-up funding was obtained from the E.U. media fund. However pre-sale negotiations for America and Germany, while cordial, proved slow, and finally ran into the sand. Eventually, having put back filming from an original autumn 2009 intended start, and with everything else in place and ready to go, Kosminsky went back to Channel 4 and laid it on the line – without another £1 million the series simply wasn't going to happen. Exceptionally, Channel 4 gave the extra funding the green light, and filming finally started in Israel in early 2010 under the revised title Homeland, beginning with the period scenes set at Stella Maris. Channel 4 presented its support as part of a £20 million investment in drama, also including This is England '86
This Is England '86
This Is England '86 is a 2010 British drama series written by Shane Meadows and Jack Thorne. A spin-off from the 2006 film This Is England, and set three years later, it focuses on the mod revival scene rather than the skinhead subculture...
and Any Human Heart
Any Human Heart (TV series)
Any Human Heart is a 2010 BAFTA award–winning TV adaptation of the novel Any Human Heart by William Boyd. It was announced in April 2010 and broadcast in four parts from 21 November to 12 December 2010 on Channel 4 in the UK and in three parts during February 2011 on the PBS series Masterpiece in...
, made possible by cancellation of the £50 million per series it was previously spending on Big Brother
Big Brother (UK)
Big Brother UK is the British version of the Dutch Big Brother television format, which takes its name from the character in George Orwell's 1948 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four...
.
Filming
The serial was filmed entirely in Israel, with a predominantly Israeli crew and through Israeli production company Lama Films; something very unusual for a UK television drama production. According to Kosminsky the team also looked at Morocco, Cyprus, Southern Spain and Tunisia, and could have recreated the 1940s sequences there; but nowhere else would have replicated the "buildings, range of cultures or topography" of modern-day Israel. The early scene of the flat in Leeds was created in an Israeli studio. Everything else was shot on location in and around Jerusalem, HaifaHaifa
Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third-largest city in the country, with a population of over 268,000. Another 300,000 people live in towns directly adjacent to the city including the cities of the Krayot, as well as, Tirat Carmel, Daliyat al-Karmel and Nesher...
, Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
, Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
, Caesarea, Acre
Acre, Israel
Acre , is a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country....
, Givat Brenner
Givat Brenner
Givat Brenner , also written Giv'at Brener, is a kibbutz in the Center District of Israel. Located around two kilometres south of Rehovot, it falls under the jurisdiction of Brenner Regional Council...
, Ein Hod
Ein Hod
Ein Hod is a communal settlement in northern Israel. Located south of Mount Carmel and southeast of Haifa in northern Israel, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. In 2008 it had a population of 559....
, Peqi'in, Ramla
Ramla
Ramla , is a city in central Israel. The city is predominantly Jewish with a significant Arab minority. Ramla was founded circa 705–715 AD by the Umayyad Caliph Suleiman ibn Abed al-Malik after the Arab conquest of the region...
and Beit Gemal in a 68 day schedule involving 180 separate different locations. Ben Gurion Airport stood in for Heathrow, and the bombed rubble of the King David Hotel
King David Hotel
The King David Hotel is a 5-star hotel in Jerusalem, Israel. Opened in 1931, the hotel was built with locally quarried pink limestone and was founded by Ezra Mosseri, a wealthy Egyptian Jewish Banker. To this day the hotel remains one of the most prominent and prestigious hotels in Israel, and...
was filmed against a blue screen in a car park in Petach Tikva. Part of the Old City in Jerusalem stood in for Nablus
Nablus
Nablus is a Palestinian city in the northern West Bank, approximately north of Jerusalem, with a population of 126,132. Located in a strategic position between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, it is the capital of the Nablus Governorate and a Palestinian commercial and cultural center.Founded by the...
in the West Bank, the Hebron-set scenes were filmed in Acre, while Gaza was represented by Jisr al-Zarqa, "reputed to be the poorest town in Israel" according to Kosminsky. The paratroopers' base at Stella Maris
Stella Maris Monastery
The Stella Maris Monastery or Monastery of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Haifa is a 19th-century Carmelite nunnery located on the slopes of Mount Carmel, Israel.- History :...
had been a challenge to find, but eventually the monastery at Beit Gemal was used and proved very accommodating. Period military vehicles were also a challenge to source without shipping them in at prohibitive expense; the tracked armoured vehicle used in the series was an amalgam of parts from five different vehicles found in a junkyard, cobbled together into one that worked.
Filming used conventional Super 16mm film, which was then processed and edited in England. The cinematographer, David Higgs, had been keen to try the new Red One high resolution digital camera. However, the team were concerned by potentially limited contrast ratio
Contrast ratio
The contrast ratio is a property of a display system, defined as the ratio of the luminance of the brightest color to that of the darkest color that the system is capable of producing...
using digital – a serious consideration in the strong Mediterranean light; and that its potential bulkiness might inhibit Kosminsky's trademark extensive use of hand-held
Hand-held camera
Hand-held camera or hand-held shooting is a filmmaking and video production technique in which a camera is held in the camera operator's hands as opposed to being mounted on a tripod or other base. Hand-held cameras are used because they are conveniently sized for travel and because they allow...
camera to follow the action. It was also felt that relying on comparatively simple well-known technology would be a good idea when operating so far from home. Ironically, however, the reliance on film led to a number of scenes having to be re-mounted after film fogging
Fogging (photography)
Fogging in photography is the deterioration in the quality of the image caused either by extraneous light or the effects of a processing chemical.-Taxonomy of fogging:...
went undetected for a whole week when it was impossible to get daily film rushes
Dailies
Dailies, in filmmaking, are the raw, unedited footage shot during the making of a motion picture. They are so called because usually at the end of each day, that day's footage is developed, synched to sound, and printed on film in a batch for viewing the next day by the director and some members...
back to London because of the air travel disruption
Air travel disruption after the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption
In response to concerns that volcanic ash ejected during the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland would damage aircraft engines, the controlled airspace of many European countries was closed to instrument flight rules traffic, resulting in the largest air-traffic shut-down since World War II...
caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull
Eyjafjallajökull is one of the smaller ice caps of Iceland, situated to the north of Skógar and to the west of Mýrdalsjökull. The ice cap covers the caldera of a volcano with a summit elevation of . The volcano has erupted relatively frequently since the last glacial period, most recently in...
volcano in Iceland. Extensive use was also made of CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
and digital post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
, which was by no means limited to the café explosion, the destruction at the King David Hotel, and the refugee ship of would-be immigrants. A particular challenge was how to realise the events at Bergen-Belsen. The film-makers considered and rejected a number of options, including live-action and CGI, before reluctantly deciding to fall back on archive black-and-white library footage provided by the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...
in London, only to come to the view that the resulting sequence had more artistic and moral power than anything they might ever have been able to create in its stead.
Reception
Overnight ratings for The Promise were 1.8 million for the first episode, followed by 1.2 million, 1.3 million, and 1.2 million viewers for the three remaining episodes. Consolidated ratings, which include time-shifted and online viewing, generally added approximately 0.5 million to these overnight figures.The first episode was reviewed widely and generally received a very positive initial notice,
John Crace
John Crace (writer)
John Crace is a British journalist writing for The Guardian.Crace is probably best known for his "The Digested Read" column, in which he reviews new fiction by condensing it into short narratives of about 700 words in the style of the book itself...
, TV review, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 7 February 2011. "It's that rarest of TV beasts: a show that doesn't patronise its audience, (mostly) steers clear of cliches and trusts the characters to tell the story in their own time."
Andrew Billen, Weekend TV: The Promise, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, 7 February 2011. "formidable". (paywalled).
James Walton, Review, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, 7 February 2011. "will richly deserve any gongs that come its way".
Matt Baylis, "Burning Bush of Genius", Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
, 7 February 2011, Page 39; also quoted by Broadcast, 7 February 2011. “This four-parter is a little burning bush of genius in the desert of well-intentioned TV dramas.”
Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran is a British broadcaster, TV critic and columnist at The Times, where she writes three columns a week: one for the Saturday Magazine, a TV review column, and the satirical Friday column "Celebrity Watch"...
, TV column, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, 12 February 2010. "almost certainly the best drama of the year". (paywalled).
James Delingpole
James Delingpole
James Delingpole is an English columnist and novelist. A self-described libertarian conservative, he writes for The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He has published several novels and four political books, most recently Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors [2011]...
, Grandfather's footsteps, The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, 12 February 2011
Hugh Montogomery, The Promise, Independent on Sunday, 13 February 2011. "[In the 1940s sequences,] Kosminsky balanced the demands of big-picture history and intimate human drama with a quite remarkable assurance. Contrastingly, the modern-day storyline was hobbled by an inertia that seemed at odds with its tumultuous subject matter."
although Andrew Anthony
Andrew Anthony
Andrew Anthony is a journalist who has written for The Guardian since 1990, and The Observer.He is also the author of On Penalties and The Fall-Out .-Published works:*On Penalties...
in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
was more critical and A.A. Gill, writing in the The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
, was unimpressed.
The Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
called it “...a little burning bush of genius in the desert of well-intentioned TV dramas...”, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
said the programme would richly deserve any Baftas that came its way, and Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran is a British broadcaster, TV critic and columnist at The Times, where she writes three columns a week: one for the Saturday Magazine, a TV review column, and the satirical Friday column "Celebrity Watch"...
in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
called it "almost certainly the best drama of the year". By the second episode Andrew Billen, writing in The Times, was concerned that both Len and Erin were meeting from the Arabs a "little too much kindness for the comfort of all of us hoping that Kosminsky will parcel out recriminations in exactly equal proportions"; but nonetheless applauded the "immersive and emotional" quality of the series.
The serial as a whole was praised by Christina Patterson in The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
who said it was “...beautifully shot and extremely well written. It is also extremely balanced...”;
and Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
and The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, where she said it was “...the best thing you are likely to see on TV this year, if not this decade.”
There was also praise from Stephen Kelly in Tribune
Tribune (magazine)
Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left...
,
Harriet Sherwood and Ian Black, Jerusalem correspondent and Middle East editor of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
respectively,
and David Chater, previewing the serial for The Times, who called it courageous and applauded its lack of didacticism.
London free newspaper Metro felt that the third episode dragged, having warmly received the first two parts; but then praised the series as a whole.
Previewing the final episode, The Times said it was "ambitious" and "packs a considerable punch";
Time Out chose the programme as its pick of the day, and gave it a four-star recommendation, calling it "brave filmmaking and a brave, entirely successful commission".
Andrew Anthony in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
acknowledged some flaws, but found it still "an exceptional drama".
A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London, however, condemned the drama to The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.-Publication data and readership figures:...
as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel". The Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Board of Deputies of British Jews
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 as a joint committee of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities in London, it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish...
both also lodged letters of complaint.
The Jewish Chronicle itself took the view that rather than "attempt to tell both sides of what is a complex and contentious story", the series had turned out to be "a depressing study in how to select historical facts to convey a politically loaded message". Writing in The Independent, novelist Howard Jacobson
Howard Jacobson
Howard Jacobson is a Man Booker Prize-winning British Jewish author and journalist. He is best known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters.-Background:...
said that in The Promise "Just about every Palestinian was sympathetic to look at, just about every Jew was not. While most Palestinians might fairly be depicted as living in poor circumstances, most Israeli Jews might not be fairly depicted as living in great wealth... Though I, too, have found Palestinians to be people of immense charm, I could only laugh in derision at The Promise every time another shot of soft-eyed Palestinians followed another shot of hard-faced Jews." In an interview with Jacobson during Jewish Book Week 2011, Jonathan Freedland
Jonathan Freedland
Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist, who writes a weekly column for The Guardian and a monthly piece for the Jewish Chronicle. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New York Review of Books, and presents BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series,...
, having seen the first episode of The Promise, said Kosminsky used antisemitic tropes, misrepresenting Israel and Zionism as being a consequence of the Holocaust, whose imagery he had abused. Historian, Professor David Cesarani
David Cesarani
David Cesarani OBE is an English historian who specialises in Jewish history, especially the Holocaust. He has also written several biographies, notably Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.-Early life:...
, accused Kosminsky of "deceit...massive historical distortion": omitting the Balfour Declaration's promise of a Jewish national home; downplaying selfish British geo-strategy; and exculpating the British, "chief architects of the Palestine tragedy...making responsible...only the Jews"; turning a tricorn conflict of British, Arabs and Jews "into a one-sided rant." On the other hand, Liel Leibovitz, writing for American online Jewish magazine Tablet
Tablet Magazine
Tablet Magazine is a two-time National Magazine Award-winning online publication of Jewish life, arts, and ideas. Sponsored by Nextbook, it was launched in June 2009. Its Editor in Chief is Alana Newhouse....
, took the view that, "contrary to these howls of discontent, the show is a rare and riveting example of telling Israel’s story on screen with accuracy, sensitivity, and courage".
The broadcasting regulator Ofcom
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
received 44 complaints about the series, but Ofcom concluded in a 10-page report that the series did not breach its code of conduct. Viewers complained that the drama, about British Mandate Palestine and its legacy, was antisemitic, used upsetting footage of concentration camps, incited racial hatred, was biased against Israel and presented historical inaccuracies. But, Ofcom said: "Just because some individual Jewish and Israeli characters were portrayed in a negative light does not mean the programme was, or was intended to be, antisemitic... Just as there were Jewish/Israeli characters that could be seen in a negative light, so there were British and Palestinian characters that could also be seen in a negative light." Delivering his first keynote speech to the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
in London on 23 May 2011, David Abraham
David Abraham (executive)
David Abraham is the Chief Executive of the United Kingdom's Channel 4 television corporation, appointed in January 2010 he formally took up his post on 4 May 2010. He was previously Chief Executive of UKTV.-Previous career:...
, the Chief Executive of Channel 4, said: "At a time when other broadcasters are perhaps more conservative, it's more important than ever for Channel 4 to challenge the status quo, stimulate debate, take risks and be brave... I can think of no better example of how we continue to do that than in Peter Kosminsky's recent examination of the Israel/Palestine question in The Promise."
The Promise was nominated for the British Academy Television Awards 2011
British Academy Television Awards 2011
The 2011 British Academy Television Awards were held on 22 May 2011. The nominations were announced on 26 April.Graham Norton hosted the ceremony.-Nominations:*Actor**Jim Broadbent — Any Human Heart...
in the category of best drama serial but was beaten by another production broadcast on Channel 4, the TV adaptation of William Boyd
William Boyd (writer)
William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
's Any Human Heart
Any Human Heart
Any Human Heart: The Intimate Journals of Logan Mountstuart is a 2002 novel by William Boyd, a Scottish writer. It is written as a lifelong series of journals kept by the protagonist, Logan Mountstuart, a writer whose life spanned the defining episodes of the twentieth century, crossed several...
. Interviewed in The Jewish Chronicle, Any Human Heart's director, Michael Samuels
Michael Samuels (director)
Michael Samuels is British television director, producer and writer.His works include Any Human Heart, Brookside, Eastenders, The Curse of Steptoe, The Falklands Play, The Last Days of Lehman Brothers, and The Vice.-References:...
, said about The Promise, "I respect it for having a point of view. You have to have that, otherwise you are not writing".
The Promise also received a nomination, at the Banff World Television Festival, for Best Mini-Series of 2010/2011. On 10 May 2011, at the One World Media Awards in London, The Promise won Best Drama of 2010/11.
France
The subscription channel Canal+Canal+
Canal+ is a French premium pay television channel launched in 1984. It is 80% owned by the Canal+ Group, which in turn is owned by Vivendi SA. The channel broadcasts several kinds of programming, mostly encrypted...
aired the drama under the title The Promise: Le Serment over four weeks starting on 21 March 2011, in a prime-time Monday evening slot that it tends to use for more serious or historical drama series. Libération
Libération
Libération is a French daily newspaper founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Originally a leftist newspaper, it has undergone a number of shifts during the 1980s and 1990s...
called it "admirable", praising the "excellent director" for telling a "tragedy in two voices", while "pointing the finger at neither one side nor the other". Les Echos called it "exceptional, stunningly intelligent" and said the considered dialogue and tense, serious acting fully measured up to the ambition of the film.
TV magazine Télérama
Télérama
Télérama is a weekly French magazine owned by Le Monde S.A. Its primary contents are television and radio listings, though the magazine also prints film, theatre, music and book reviews, as well as cover stories and feature articles of cultural interest. The name is a contraction of its earlier...
called it "remarkable", confronting its subject "head on".
Le Figaro
Le Figaro
Le Figaro is a French daily newspaper founded in 1826 and published in Paris. It is one of three French newspapers of record, with Le Monde and Libération, and is the oldest newspaper in France. It is also the second-largest national newspaper in France after Le Parisien and before Le Monde, but...
said it was "magnificently filmed and masterfully acted... perfectly balanced... great television", and gave it a maximum rating of four stars out of four.
The Nouvel Obs and Le Journal du Dimanche
Le Journal du Dimanche
Le Journal du Dimanche is a French weekly newspaper. It is only published on Sundays.-History:The newspaper was created by Pierre_Lazareffin 1948. It now belongs to the Lagardère Group, through Hachette Filipacchi Médias...
both identified the series as reflecting the viewpoint of the "British pro-Palestinian left", but the latter praised it as "nevertheless a historical fiction useful for understanding an intractable conflict", while the former commended its "epic spirit, rare on television". Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
gave the series an enthusiastic preview in its TéléVisions supplement along with a lengthy interview with the director. Le Point
Le Point
Le Point is a French weekly news magazine. It was founded in 1972 by a group of journalists who had, one year earlier, left the editorial team of L'Express, which was then owned by Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, a député of the Parti Radical...
predicted Kosminsky would receive a "shower of awards...[a]nd also gibes". However, La Croix
La Croix
La Croix is a daily French general-interest Roman Catholic newspaper. It is published in Paris and distributed throughout the country, with a circulation of just under 110,000 as of 2009...
s reviewer was more hostile, considering that although there was "no doubt that the film ought to be seen", it "cannot be mistaken for a history lesson but a great partisan fiction", marred by bias and an "embarrassing" representation of Jews".
L'Express
L'Express (France)
L'Express is a French weekly news magazine. When founded in 1953 during the First Indochina War, it was modelled on the US magazine TIME.-History:...
considered it beautiful but too long.
A letter of protest to the channel was written by the President of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF
Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France
Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France is an umbrella organization of French Jewish organizations. CRIF opposes anti-Semitism and policies that they perceive to be anti-Semitic....
), arguing that "the viewer sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however complex, only as a consequence of violence and cruelty of the Jews, who are represented as so extreme that if any empathy towards them is excluded." CRIF did not ask for the broadcast to be pulled, but rather to be balanced with a programme taking a different position, and for the fictional nature of the series to be made clear. The Jewish Chronicle (The JC)
The Jewish Chronicle
The Jewish Chronicle is a London-based Jewish newspaper. Founded in 1841, it is the oldest continuously published Jewish newspaper in the world.-Publication data and readership figures:...
reported that CRIF president Richard Prasquier
Richard Prasquier
Richard Presquier is the president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions.- References :...
had met the president of Canal+, Bertrand Meheut. Prasquier reportedly told him that such a series "could only fan the flames of antisemitic violence" and Meheut reportedly promised that viewers would be provided with balanced information about the issue; The JC reported that Canal+ had agreed to broadcast a caption reading "The Promise is fiction" before each episode. The Confederation of French Jews and Friends of Israel (CJFAI) issued a call (publicised by CRIF) for a demonstration against the programme, which it described as "a vitriolic saga of murderous disinformation". The demonstration in front of the Canal+ offices on the night of the first showing was reported to have attracted a few hundred people, with CRIF represented by its vice-president. The Israeli embassy in Paris made no comment.
Arte
Arte
Arte is a Franco-German TV network. It is a European culture channel and aims to promote quality programming especially in areas of culture and the arts...
is expected to show the series in 2012.
External links
- Official website
- Canal+ website , including some video-interviews in English
- The Fabulous Picture Show - The Promise - Q & A with film's director hosted by Amanda Palmer on Al Jazeera English (video, 15:19 min (9:25-25:06)). Al Jazeera article accompanying video.
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/28/the-promise-peter-kosminsky-middle-eastA film-maker's eye on the Middle East. Article by Peter KosminskyPeter KosminskyPeter Kosminsky is a British writer, director and producer. He has directed Hollywood movies such as White Oleander and television films like Warriors, The Government Inspector and The Promise.- Biography :...
, The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 28 January 2011] - Peter Kosminsky: Britain's humiliation in Palestine. Feature in The Observer, 23 January 2011
- Palestine, ParaData website, Trustees of the Airborne Forces Museum, Duxford. Documents from the 6th Airborne Division's real-life stationing in Palestine.
- Yoav Etiel, Jisr al-Zarqa on the way to Hollywood , Magazin no.209, 30 April 2010. Article on The Promise and A Bottle in the Gaza Sea both filming in Jisr al-Zarqa for Gaza. Behind the scenes photos: page 1, page 2, page 3