The Promise (2011 TV serial)

The Promise
Serial DVD cover
Genre	Drama Period drama
Written by	Peter Kosminsky
Directed by	Peter Kosminsky
Starring	Claire Foy Christian Cooke Perdita Weeks Itay Tiran Katharina Schüttler Haaz Sleiman
Composer(s)	Debbie Wiseman
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	4
Production
Executive producer(s)	David Aukin
Producer(s)	Hal Vogel
Cinematography	David Higgs
Editor(s)	David Blackmore
Running time	81, 87, 83 and 105 minutes
Release
Original network	Channel 4
Picture format	HDTV 1080i
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	6 February – 27 February 2011
External links
Website

The Promise is a British television serial in four episodes written and directed by Peter Kosminsky, with music by Debbie Wiseman. It tells the story of a young woman who goes to present-day Israel/Palestine determined to find out about her soldier grandfather's involvement in the final years of Palestine under the British mandate. It premiered on Channel 4 on 6 February 2011.

Erin Matthews is an eighteen-year-old British teenager about to start her gap year. She is unwillingly taken to see her grandfather Len, now in his eighties, who is in hospital having been paralysed by a major stroke. Erin hardly knows him; but reluctantly helping her mother to clear out his flat, she finds a diary describing her grandfather's time as a Sergeant in the 6th Airborne Division in British Mandate Palestine after the Second World War. Her mother wants her to bin it; but Erin surreptitiously keeps it, and decides to take up her best friend Eliza on her offer to spend some time in Israel, while Eliza, who has UK/Israeli dual citizenship, undergoes basic training for her compulsory Israeli military service. As they fly out Erin starts to read the diary, and becomes fascinated: the diary opens with Len describing "the worst day of his life so far" – the horrors he is finding on liberating Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. From now on the series intercuts between the two stories as they develop, hers in 2005 and his in the 1940s.

From Germany, Len's unit is sent to Stella Maris base near Haifa, to be part of the British Mandate forces there to act as the "meat in the sandwich", keeping the peace between the Arabs and the Jews whose number is increasing. The first job for Len's platoon is to round up a group of desperate European Jewish refugees coming ashore from a ship. The refugees are taken to a detention centre, where the forced showers and captivity behind wire fences are all too reminiscent of what Len has just seen in Germany. Returning to the beach he finds a straggler. Sympathetic, he is about to send her on her way when they are spotted by a passing patrol. Back at base Len is reprimanded, his commander emphasising the danger of Arab insurrection if entry is not controlled. Nevertheless, Len considers that "If I'd been through what these people went through, I'd want a homeland too," and that what he had been asked to do that day "weren't right". At the City Hospitality Club in Haifa, Len's corporal Jackie Clough introduces him to two Jewish girls: Ziphora and Clara. Clara explains that the club's purpose is to generate goodwill for the Jews; she herself is paid by the city to be there. Meanwhile Len has conducted a search of the kibbutz at Qiryat Haiyim with his men, but found nothing—not a surprise, he is told, as the entire secretariat at Stella Maris is Jewish and "leaks like a sieve". Clara invites him back to tea, where her father tries to get him to talk about Stella Maris. Len's superior Rowntree encourages Len to make contact with the Jewish underground, suggesting a crowd at a rally would be a safer place than Clara's flat. However, when Len is approached, his contact is shot dead by a bullet from the British forces policing the rally: Len has been set up. Out on armoured patrol a chamberpot is emptied over the soldiers; then at the base several of Len's men are shot, some of them in the back while they are hosing down the vehicles, in a raid by Jewish militants. Len goes to see Clara, whose father apologises for what has happened to Len's men, but tells Len that after what has happened he is no longer welcome there. Clara however follows Len down the stairs and embraces him.