buiger Very good, finally a fairly balanced attempt at depicting the middle- eastern problem. I very much appreciated the fact that the movie tried to remain rather unbiased (except toward the end, where it went a little over the top with showing the brutality of the IDF and excessively victimizing the Palestinians). The two story lines make it possible to show at the same time both the current situation as well as the original creation of the problem, its roots. Great idea!All in all, some good acting, good cinematography and decent, clear dialog (especially for a made-for-TV flick). If anything is lacking its a good musical score, but it doesn't take away much from the movie. I can only recommend this movie to all. Most will learn a lot by watching it, and it will make many think again about the preconceptions they have about this issue, mostly due to ignorance and misinformation in the media.

jontic A great piece of intelligent television. Biased? Didn't seem to spare anyone. Pretty much every group was shown acting horrendously, but also how much of those actions arose/arise from the context, and were compelling and difficult to avoid. Palestinians, British, the Isrealis, none demonised despite the awful things they all did and do, and as such it was really a remarkable feat. It is very hard to find that middle ground, (and that is also the problem for those in Isreal who want peace too). Great performances from Christian Cooke and Clare Foy. Clare in particular played the not terribly likable ingénue with distinction and subtlety. It isn't Hollywood, not evil v good, no heroes and no villains. The violence is shown as solving nothing and just leads to more vile acts of attrition. The story that holds it together has some artificiality, but does manage to run the two threads, 1947-8 and 2010 together very well.

Edinman1 I had a personal interest in this for two reasons. My father served with the paras in Palestine (having joined up to fight the Germans) and I've had a long-term interest in what is now known as the 'IP' question. I have to say I was engrossed by the whole series, although there a few dramatic devices which were verging on the unbelievable. It might have worked better as a drama for those who knew absolutely nothing about the situation, in either era. I probably spent too much time worrying about the politics. My sympathies have always lain with the Palestinian side, and there were bits of it I thought were good for setting out a side to Israel that isn't always seen (eg the attitude of the settlers to the indigenous population, which I suspect are an embarrassment to many Israelis). However, although I know where I stand, I wouldn't want to watch anything which contained too much simple propaganda. I think The Promise did achieve a level of balance, sometimes to the detriment of the drama (eg the King David Hotel incident being followed by a suicide bomber). The perception has been is that The Promise was more pro Arab than Israeli, but I can guarantee that no-one with strong views and a knowledge of the history would be particularly satisfied with the politics. For instance, all the main characters were either Brits or Jews, the Arabs were walk-on one dimensional characters. I think it can best be regarded as a drama set in turbulent times, and not as a drama documentary - there is simply too much history to cover to do anything else. I realise it was a dramatic device but poor Len seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time throughout. To put in context, the British had about 100,000 troops in Palestine from 46 to 48, and lost 234 (ish). Not a small figure, but less than you would think from watching The Promise where every other Jew appeared to be a member of the Irgun (which was just one of a number of Jewish organisations). And the 100,000 weren't all Paras... As others have mentioned, why didn't Erin just read the whole diary at once!! Anyway, I elected not to include spoilers so I'll remain silent on various bits which annoyed me along the 'that didn't happen' and 'that couldn't happen' lines. But overall, I did actually enjoy it. Worth watching.

Guy I had reservations about THE PROMISE. After all, this is a four-part, eight-hour long miniseries, taking part in two time periods about the Israel-Palestine conflict. This tricky issue tends to be reduced to propaganda by partisans from both sides. Unfortunately Peter Kosminsky is such a partisan and he delivers a rant in the form of melodrama, not helped by tired direction, a thin script and poor history.The story is partly set in 2005 and partly in the period 1945-8. In 2005 a young British student named Erin finds her grandfather's diary. Through the diary we follow Len, her grandfather, as he serves with the British Army in Palestine from 1945 to 1948. This becomes significant as Erin travels to Israel with a friend and finds herself trying to fulfil a promise her grandfather made all those years ago.Kosminsky's pitch is essentially ethnic Jewish self-criticism in which he castigates the Israelis for the bloody way in which they founded and have maintained their state. Unfortunately this means that he isn't really very interested in either the Palestinians or the British. The Palestinians appear only as victims and exercise no agency of their own. Erin/Len largely act as eyes for the viewer. By far the most interesting parts concern the Israeli family of Erin's friend and their internal dynamics (grandfather is an ex-Irgun, the parents are good liberal Israelis, the son is a former soldier working for peace, the daughter has just been conscripted for the IDF). Erin (apparently based on Kosminsky's daughters - God help them) is an ignorant slag who manages to sleep with most of the cast for no discernible reason, who is often bafflingly obtuse (demanding driving lessons from a Palestinian when her epilepsy means she isn't allowed to drive) and spends most of her time in a sullen pout. She's also a bit of an idiot - when the Israeli's try to bulldoze a Palestinian house she chains herself and a young child to a pillar inside. Endangering kids much? The whole thing is then rendered instantly facile when her Israeli chum promptly gets out a pair of wire- cutters and breaks the chain before taking her outside. Much of her time is spent prompting people to provide long, boring exposition in case the audience are idiots. Incidentally her epilepsy almost never features in the story and serves no purpose.Len meanwhile is a such a mass of contradictions as to not exist as a proper character. Supposedly a veteran of Arnhem, a tough Para and a working class lad from Leeds, he is played with a doe eyed passivity, broken only by moments of shrill anger and unconvincing heroics (all the combat scenes are silly and exist only to liven up the trailers). His loyalties are supposed to be tested but really he just rolls with the flow, transferring his loyalties to whichever side (Arab or Jew) has received the most victim points that episode. Rather than bother to build a character Kosminsky just manufactures scenes every so often where Brits are beastly to Arabs/Jews so that Len can swan in and save them so that we know he's a hero. Probably his finest moment is when finds his Jewish girlfriend tarred and feathered and promptly decides that what a traumatised woman needs is...yet another painfully ugly sex scene.The script makes very little pretence to be even handed, picking (rightly)on every Israeli fault whilst ignoring Arab ones. Both Len and Erin go on a learning journey from pro-Israeli/Jewish to anti- Israeli/Jewish (as opposed to pro-Palestinian/Arab). In Erin's timeline this works OK as she meets the Jewish religious settlers (not very nice people), sees the humiliating checkpoint system, the chronic discrimination against Palestinians and discovers the results of the ethnic cleansing from 1948. However this method works very badly for Len's story. So you get the arrival of the Holocaust survivors, the King David Hotel bombing, the Affair of the Sergeants and the ethnic cleansing of Arab villages in 1948. But there is little else but these big events and as a result the whole narrative is very jumpy, with no sense of the passage of time.A lot of the problems are down to the ham-handedness of the direction and deeply mediocre work by the DP. There is no feel for the period 1945-8 and the impression is often of children playing dress-up. Many scenes are risibly bad with pride of place going to a terrible exploding CGI door that flies straight at the viewer like one of those gimmick shots from a 3D movie. There is also precious little tension, mood- building, immediacy or physicality. Moments that ought to be shocking or scary or blood-pumping are instead flat. There is also a tendency to manufacture fake drama, as when Len leaves his unit (who are under attack) to rescue the son of his Arab friend, escorts him several miles and then abandons him 100 feet from safety whereupon the kid is promptly shot by a sniper. It makes no sense and is utterly contrived. Incidentally, Len then returns to his unit, with several hours having passed, to discover that...literally nothing has changed.There are numerous historical oddities. For instance, Len is a Sergeant but appears to have no officer and is casually let into high-ranking meetings. For instance, the impression is given that Israel started the 1948 war and that it was a purely Israeli-Palestinian fight. For instance, Kosminsky's belief that the use of collective punishment by the Brits against Jews and by Israelis against Palestinians is unique (it's as old as time).I don't have a side in the Israel-Palestine dispute and frankly don't care. My interest was largely in the British.This is poor history, poor writing and poor drama.