Ascendancy

I usually make it a rule never to comment on domestic Irish politics - I think it's usually best to leave that to those who live on that particular Emerald Isle but given that, even I felt this drama rather over-simplified the problems facing the population after the Great War had raged on the continent. This story is told through the increasingly troubled eyes of "Connie" (Julie Covington) - a member of the landed gentry - and focusses on the embryonic but burgeoning independence movement. The war has taken it's toll on not just the local - loyalist - population, but also on the British Empire itself and with the added issues of famine affecting the nation, an opportunity to break the colonial yoke appears to beckon. She, however, lives a comfortable life away from all these stresses behind the gates of her father's mansion. He (John Phillips) is a wealthy industrialist who is probably quite fair minded by the standards of the early 1920s, but who is being put in a series of difficult positions by his increasingly polarised, dare one even say sectarian, workforce. Unexpectedly, she encounters "Ryder" (Ian Charleson) - a recovering soldier who clearly has his own red mists to deal with, and through her association with him she finds herself drawn, philosophically at least, into the republican movement in a tangential but quite affecting way for her as her health begins to deteriorate and her grasp on reality begins to loosen. What help can her new friend be? Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood for this soporific costume drama, but at no point did I actually feel invested in any of the characters nor in a storyline that ought to have been far more evocative than it was. It reminded me a lot of an episode of "Foyle's War" - only without the benefits of strong characterisations and challengeing writing. This is much more of a slowly paced soap that pitches the rich against the not-so-rich along some blandly stereotypical lines and although towards the conclusion I felt C...