‘Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland’: The BBC documentary Charlie Brooker calls “absolutely brilliant”
The screenwriter Charlie Brooker has revealed some of his recent cultural highlights, picking out one documentary he believed to be “absolutely brilliant”.
In a conversation with The Guardian, the writer behind season six of the Netflix series Black Mirror revealed some of his most recent TV and movie highlights, picking out the documentary Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland as a personal favourite.
“I thought this documentary about the Troubles was absolutely brilliant,” the writer revealed, “Shamefully, on watching it I realised how little I actually knew or understood about the situation, even though when I was growing up it was on the news every day. It’s an incredible series of interviews with people who lived through it, from all different sides. It was a real eye-opener – very moving and sometimes darkly amusing”.
Continuing, he adds: “Patrick Kielty shows up in it and speaks very articulately and intelligently about the Good Friday agreement. I sometimes prefer documentaries to scripted things, partly because I don’t get professional jealousy”.
Later in the conversation, he spoke about his cinematic highlights, stating: “RRR is possibly the single most over-the-top thing I’ve seen in my life. It’s set in India in around 1920 and it’s about two men who become friends despite being enemies. It manages to be simultaneously ridiculous, incredibly engaging and hilarious – in places harrowing, and then joyful”.
Speaking further about the Oscar-winning action movie, he adds: “There are two huge dance sequences in it, mind-bending action, and it’s funny to see something in which the British are unequivocal villains. It’s a real feat to get me to watch a three-and-a-half-hour film – it’s almost endless. But it’s brilliant”.
Take a look at the trailer for Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland below, which is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer.
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