Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Five Minutes of Heaven ... on a BBC two screen near you

I posted about Five Minutes of Heaven and its cinematic première in Belfast back in February.

Now it's the turn of the small screen, and Five Minutes of Heaven will be broadcast on BBC Two (network-wide, not just locally) on Sunday night at 9pm, depicting how the lives of Alistair Little and Joe Griffen (played by Liam Neeson and Jimmy Nesbitt) overlapped during a brutal UVF shooting in Lurgan, and how their paths converged years later in an opportunity for reconciliation and possibly revenge.

Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt in Five Minutes of Heaven

It'll be interesting to hear what English, Scotish and Welsh audiences (I wanted to say "mainland" but I chickened out) make of it. I suspect a lot of the subtlety will be completely lost on them, and they'll see it as a psychological piece with two actors they recognise and a lot of emotion and angst. But for local audiences - and particularly in light of the recent resurgence in violence - it will tell a more haunting story of pain and consequence.

3 comments:

Pete Baker said...

I wasn't particularly impressed with the show.

agmcbride said...

I watched this programme on Sunday. I thought it was pretty awesome although it did make me upset. I lived in Belfast until 1995 and, to be honest, it is only now that my brain is reflecting on the crap that we had to live through (and nobody in family was killed). I thought Neeson and Nesbit's acting was superb.

Tom Parnell said...

Well, here's a mainlander for you (I'm in Oxford) - Google just brought me to your two posts about the film, which I just reviewed.

I enjoyed your posts ... But I'm interested to know what subtleties you imagine might be lost on English/Scottish/Welsh audiences. I'm not sure I felt I was missing out on anything (though, of course, I wouldn't). Although the setting/context is one with which I'm less familiar than many, I didn't feel that this lack of familiarity obscured my understanding of the film.

Thanks for the posts.