Gelobtes Land (2011)

Vorlage:Infobox Television The Promise is a British television serial in four episodes written and directed by Peter Kosminsky, with music by Debbie Wiseman, which premiered on 6 February 2011 on Channel 4. It deals with a young woman going to Israel/Palestine in the present day, using her visit to investigate her soldier grandfather's part in the post-war phase of the British Mandate of Palestine.

Cast

• Claire Foy as Erin Matthews
• Christian Cooke as Sergeant Leonard Matthews
• Itay Tiran as Paul Meyer
• Katharina Schüttler as Clara Rosenbaum
• Haaz Sleiman as Omar Habash
• Ali Suliman as Abu-Hassan Mohammed
• Perdita Weeks as Eliza Meyer
• Ben Miles as Max Meyer
• Smadar Wolfman as Leah Meyer
• Holly Aird as Chris Matthews

Subjects depicted in the serial

• British liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
• Ein Hawd and Ein Hod villages
• King David Hotel bombing
• The Sergeants affair - the kidnapping and murder of two British soldiers in Palestine
• Deir Yassin massacre
• Battle of Haifa (1948)
• 1948 Palestinian exodus
• Israeli–Palestinian conflict in Hebron
• Gaza–Israel conflict
• House demolition in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Plot

 

Part 1

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 "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. 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 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.

Meanwhile, intercut with this, in 2005 Erin is experiencing life with Eliza's extremely well-to-do family; who have flown her and Eliza in by business class, drive Mercedes cars, and live in luxurious Caesarea in a beach-front villa with swimming pool. Eliza takes Erin shopping and clubbing in Tel Aviv, although this is cut short when Erin's epilepsy is triggered by the flashing lights in the club. Erin also meets Eliza's brother Paul, described by Eliza as "crazy", who has come out of the army transformed into a radical Leftist. Paul and Eliza's father is a former general who criticised the occupation and is now a leading liberal. He and Paul however angrily clash over politics at the dinner table. According to Paul, his father's liberalism and protests merely mislead people into thinking Israel is a normal country like their own; when the truth is that it is a "military dictatorship", dominated by the military, and led by a series of former military leaders. Erin asks Paul to take her to see the grave of one of Len's comrades, who in the diary has just been killed in the raid on the base. At the CWGC cemetary she is stopped in her tracks to find the graves of two more names she knows from the diary: Sergeants Robbins and Nash -- in the diary as far as she has read, they are still alive. Rather than take her straight back to Caesarea, Paul takes her through a checkpoint into the Occupied Territories. In Nablus Erin finds him addressing a meeting of Combatants for Peace together with Omar, a former member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. According to Paul, "Once you've met your former enemy ... you can never take up that weapon again." At the end of the meeting, the two shake hands; and Paul drives Omar back towards his home, on the Israeli side of the line. They are initially waved through at the checkpoint, but when Omar goes back to remonstrate with the IDF border guards about a couple being split up, he is detained. Paul is dismissive of the checkpoints as just a way to make Palestinian life difficult, and points to a stretch of the separation barrier where there is an Palestinian village on each side of the wall. "That one is outside the checkpoint; that one is inside the checkpoint. Which one does the terrorist come from?" They go to a café; but when Paul goes back for his wallet, the café is blown apart by a suicide bomb.

Part 2

Len disciplines some soldiers who are abusing his company's char-wallah. At the club, Jackie teases him that Clara is after a "ring and a passport". But Len has a meeting at Army HQ later, so Clara asks him to take her home. There is no-one in, so she takes him to bed, asking him to stay a little longer. The meeting, at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, is a briefing on "Operation Bulldog", the upcoming cordon and search of the entire city of Tel Aviv. But as the meeting gets underway, there is an explosion and disturbance outside. Some civilians in a neighbouring room are out on the balcony, and Len goes through to encourage them to move away from the window; but then there is a second, much bigger explosion, and when Len regains consciousness, he is in the midst of devastation. The briefing room no longer exists: looking down, he sees that an entire wing of the building has been destroyed.

In 2005 rescue teams arrive to help the wounded from the café explosion. At the hospital Erin walks through room after room of casualties before she finds Paul, just as Paul's father arrives. He is alive, but his leg, arm and eye are bandaged.

Len digs a woman out of the rubble of the King David Hotel, but she is dead. That night, arriving at the club still covered in masonry dust, Len rounds on Clara for having known in advance and tried to protect him; but Clara protests she was only trying to show him that she loved him. At the base, the char-wallah alerts Len that Alec Hyman, one of his men who is Jewish, is being given a "regimental bath" in retribution -- he is being viciously scrubbed until he has to be hospitalised. Len breaks it up, and later thanks the char-wallah, learning his name: Mohammed. Operation Bulldog gets underway. After a firefight, Len's platoon storm a house where an injured one of the King David bombers had been being hidden. He has however been moved: despite every precaution, the operation has been leaked. The owners protest that they had been forced to harbour the Irgun members at gunpoint; but they are nevertheless taken away, and the British blow up their house. Mesheq Yagur kibbutz is searched ruthlessly, apparently to no avail until Len discovers a ventilation pipe hidden in the middle of a children's merry-go-round. Hidden beneath the floor of a nearby schoolroom is a trapdoor, which leads to an underground chamber and a substantial arms cache. Returning to base, the soldiers are serenaded by a group of schoolchildren, handing out bunches of flowers. Rowntree explains that they are anemones, or kalaniot in Hebrew: "red for the paratrooper's beret; black for his heart". Wishing to be shot of them, Len hands the bunch to Mohammed; only to be told he has now put Mohammed under an obligation, and Mohammed will be duty-bound to offer him dinner. The dinner is a copious and convivial affair, involving Mohammed and much of his extended family. Finally they celebrate with a group photograph with Len outside Mohammed's house.

Paul's mother complains that the suicide bombers at the café were "animals". Paul replies that then she should tell Erin about some of the animals who blew up the King David hotel, or one particular "animal" at least -- his mother's father, who had been one of the group responsible; and that both situations were "pathetic": "people blowing up buildings because they can't make their point any other way".

Erin has been on the point of going home; but she turns ahead to read the last page of Len's diary; and finds with it, in an envelope, a key. Len writes that he is facing prison, and has let down everyone who ever trusted him. He would like at least to return the key to Mohammed, but is not sure he could face him, after what he has done. Haunted by this, and the fact that she knows her grandfather has since been unhappy all his life, Erin decides to stay and try to find out more. Looking up Omar's telephone number in Paul's phone, she gets Omar to take her to Ein Hawd, which was the location of Mohammed's house in the diary. But she finds that that village is now Ein Hod, and no longer Palestinian, but now a Jewish artistic centre. The Palestinians "all left in 1948" and are most likely now "in some camp in Jordan, probably", a woman at the information centre tells her. But some, interned in 1948 in the Galilee, had eventually returned and founded a new Ein Hawd, in what had previously been the orchards of their fields high up above the old village. An old man agrees to let them drive him through what was once his village, and eventually from the photograph they identify what had been Mohammed's house. Returning to the new Ein Hawd, he thanks Erin: it had been good to go, even though it was painful. He is able to give Omar an address in Hebron, though when Erin intensely asks Omar whether he would take her, he replies that Paul might be the better guide: it was where Paul was in the army for three years.

Erin and Eliza go to see Eliza's grandfather. He is unapologetic, and downright: his father, mother, sister and brother had all died in the camps. Had Eliza ever told Erin that? No, "because the people of his generation had been determined that the Jewish people would never again capitulate in the face of genocide." They had been determined to carve out a land which could be safe for ever. The British stood in their way, so they "wiped them out. It was as simple as that."

Len and Jackie and another soldier are driving through town off-duty in a Jeep when a car stops a suspiciously long time in front of them. Len reaches for his revolver, but two men with handguns appear and shoot all three soldiers, the last one at point-blank range through the head. As Len and Jackie struggle for life, bystanders in cafés continue to stir their coffees, utterly unmoved.

Part 3

While in hospital Len shows some compassion to Avram Klein, a Jewish militant who has been shot in the jaw having shot three British policemen, even after a violent attempt to free Klein fails. Recovered, Rowntree asks Len to persuade Klein to appeal to the Privy Council, otherwise he will be executed in two weeks. Len finds Klein in a darkened windowless solitary confinement cell in Acre. But Klein is uninterested: "Every movement needs its martyrs".

Meanwhile Len has started giving Mohammed's son Hassan extra maths help; and Clara has getting hostile glances from people who think she is fraternising with the enemy.

Erin is dropped by taxi at Abu Dis, where Omar lives adjacent to the separation wall. He is playing cards on the roof, and non-plussed when Erin says he had agreed to give her a driving lesson. He also puts Erin right when she asks why he doesn't follow the call to prayer -- why should he, he is a Palestinian Christian. In the car Erin admits that she is forbidden to drive because of her epilepsy. Omar drives her back to Caesarea, where against his better judgement Erin tempts him into the house, and then the pool. They are starting to kiss when Eliza's parents appear, returned home early. Eliza's father is formulaicly polite; his wife looks daggers. A strained dinner follows, not helped when Erin cheerily announces that Omar had been with the al-Aqsa martyrs. Erin texts for Eliza to rescue her, but her friend is also uncomprehending; and Paul also, though warm to Omar, seems not entirely happy. Eliza's parents start to have a serious talk with Erin; but she is taken by an epileptic fit, and collapses. When she has recovered, Paul comes in to see her; again she senses that he is upset with her, but he denies it.

Arriving at Clara's flat, Len is perturbed to find the door ajar, and the place turned over and apparently deserted. Clara is at the bathtub. Much of her hair has been torn out, and she has been thickly daubed all over with heavy oil and feathers. Len comforts her and stays with her; but later, there is an appointment that he has to keep. When he will not be drawn as to what it is, Clara can't believe that "even after all this he still does not trust her". Len relents and tells her everything: where he is going, when he has to be there, even the name of the spy that he and Robbins and Nash are going to meet, until eventually she shushes him and begs him for no more. Len leaves for his meeting; but they have been betrayed. At the meeting they are ambushed; their Jewish informant is led away; and Len and the two Intelligence Corps sergeants are abducted. A British Army major apologises to Len that it has been a ruse, to try to determine whether Robbins is a spy. But Len is unconvinced, and he is dragged off to join the others, held in a small vertical hole under a heavy trapdoor, with just enough room for themselves and an oxygen cylinder. Days pass, and Len is again dragged up to see the "major", who tells Len he was indeed a wartime officer, in the Palestine Jewish Brigade, and had then spirited Jews out of the camps onto boats "right under the noses of our British officers". He wants Len to join him, but Len is not interested: "Tell Clara the answer's no". More days pass, and Len is dragged out again. Unhooded, and out in the open, he expects to be shot; but when he opens his eyes, he is alone. He brings Rowntree back to the factory where he was held; but Robbins and Nash are gone. Word comes that something has been found two miles away. It is Robbins and Nash, dead, hanging hooded from trees. A communiqué hung around Robbins' neck says he has been found guilty of murder, and executed in reprisal for the "illegal killing" of Avram Klein. Sappers with metal detectors have declared the ground around the trees clear; but when a member of the Palestine Police starts to cut the body down, there is an explosion and the body is blown apart. Len returns to Clara's flat in a fury, but she has gone. "Why am I still alive?" rages Len; but Clara's father can give him no answer -- "She has much more extreme views than me... I'm terribly sorry". Len confesses all to Rowntree; then, talking to Jackie Clough, he suffers an epileptic fit. Robbins and Nash are buried with military honours.

Erin is moved to read Len's description of the fit. Hearing Paul playing the piano, she goes through and shows him a press cutting from the diary, about Robbins and Nash. Initially guarded to see her, he remembers it: it was what broke the British will to fight. Erin also tells him about Len's fit: Len doesn't seem to know what it is. She wishes she could just tell him. Paul takes her by the hand and kisses her. Momentarily she is thrown off balance; then they kiss again, and she embraces him. Waking up the next morning in Paul's bed, it takes her a moment to take stock; then she gets up, leaving Paul to sleep on. From a bus on the way to Hebron she rings Omar -- maybe he could meet her there? Hebron is noisy and crowded. At a military checkpoint a liberal Israeli guide is explaining to a group that part of the city has been closed off as a 'sterile zone'; he is being barracked by an orthodox settler with a megaphone. Erin slips past the group and into the zone. She falls in with a group of Palestinian schoolgirls being walked from their school. The girls are verbally abused crossing a playground, then stoned by some young Jewish boys as they go down some steps, while some IDF soldiers ineffectually wander around. Erin improvises a bandage for a cut on one of the girls' heads, thanking the Duke of Edinburgh. The group are able to point her to a house that matches her address, but the girls can go no further: "Yehud". At the doorway she is met by a Jewish orthodox woman, who after a quick discussion with her daughter lets Erin in. Inside she is led past a maze of rooms with young women holding toddlers and a room where a few men are praying to a room where more of the orthodox men are eating. Erin starts to explain her quest, and one of the men is responding to her courteously and apparently with interest, when two IDF soldiers arrive and lead her away, brought by the daughter. Behind her the man furiously rebukes the woman, presumably his wife. Outside, she is bundled into an IDF military vehicle: "You can't be here". Erin fumbles out a text with her phone, while she is driven away.

Part 4

Taken from a cell at the local IDF base, Erin is about to be questioned when Paul appears. This was where he was stationed for three years; he trained many of the men. Over a beer on the roof, he tells her the army are there to protect the settlers, not to keep the peace; they can treat the Palestinians as badly as they like. "Everyone's mind gets fucked up here." Erin wakes in the night and is almost shot by a sniper bullet. Paul has his ex-comrades throw him a gun, and blazes away into the night with the rest of them -- despite what he had said in Nablus. "It's called loyalty, Erin," he tells her. Asking questions house to house the next morning, they find a woman who is the grand-daughter of Mohammed's cousin. Settlers now drop down broken glass onto her yard from what had been her grandfather's house, though once he had once protected 400 Jews from a massacre. The orthodox woman from the previous day turns up and starts to insult her. Erin goes to intervene, but Paul leads her away -- it will just make things worse once they have gone. On the road back north, Erin gets Paul to tell her where Mohammed's family have now gone: Gaza, and she is not to even think of going there, it is a warzone.

Back in 1947, a joyful crowd are celebrating the U.N. partition resolution which will create a Jewish state. Searching for the source of the Kol Zion underground broadcasts, Len's men raid some flats nearby. Jackie's gun accidentally misfires. The top flat appears empty, but some hidden steps lead up to the roof. Len stumbles, but Jackie catches one of the operators. It is Zipphora, his girlfriend. Jackie lets her go. Back on the ground, Len angrily beats him: how much had he told her? "Whatever she wanted to know... same reason you told Clara about Robbins and Nash." Visiting Mohammed, Len advises him to move somewhere safer: the British will not protect him. But to Mohammed it is his home; he will not be scared into leaving.

Erin feels out of place at a party of Eliza's friends. On a laptop, she watches a news report of another suicide bombing. She clashes with Paul, who does not understand why this is all so important to her.

Len is driving Mohammed's son Hassan back from a maths exam. He turns off down a track to investigate a column of smoke. It is the village of Deir Yassin. Jewish fighters are going from house to house, throwing in grenades and then shooting any occupants with automatic weapons. The casualties are women and children. Men are being forced into the village square in threes and fours and shot. One of the fighters is Clara. She asks him to join her: they could be together; not everything was a lie. And what does he have to go back to? But Len turns and leaves. He confronts Rowntree, but Rowntree will not send help -- he is under a direct order: "No British lives are to be put at risk to protect the Arabs."

Erin goes to see Omar; but he too refuses to help. She shows him the key. "You don't know what this is, do you?", he responds; and carefully unwraps for her another key, the key to his uncle's house in Jaffa, which had been his uncle's most precious possession. He will do it. Erin embraces him, and next she is being made love to -- by Len. She wakes with a start, next to Omar in a minibus taxi of people.

Len's platoon are manning a position in Haifa, overlooked by armed Jewish irregulars. An order comes for them to pull back, but that will leave the Souk an open target for the Jewish mortars. Len goes back to the base to find Rowntree, but it is a chaos of people carrying files and papers to burn. Outside the roads are clogged with a mass of Arab refugees moving on foot. Mohammed protests that the Arab armies will protect them; but Len tells him that if they come at all they will be too late: the Jews will be there by nightfall, they must go now. The family pack in to Len's jeep to get to the docks, where the Navy is taking people across to Acre. But there can be no place for Hassan's dog. Mohammed puts it to Len that his bullet will be kinder than Mohammed's knife, so Len takes the dog away from the Jeep, and shoots it. Mohammed locks up the house, commanding Hassan to keep the key safe "because one day we will return"; but at the docks Hassan goes missing in the chaotic crowd. Len says he will go back and find Hassan, and persuades Mohammed to get his wife and daughter to safety; Mohammed makes Len promise he will not leave without him. Len returns to his men and fills a bag with grenades and ammunition, ordering Alec (now a lance-corporal) over Alec's protests to get the men safely to the docks.

Erin and Omar are led through a tunnel into Gaza. A taxi takes them to a house with a banner with a woman's picture hanging outside, where there is a gathering of Palestinians. It belongs to a cousin of Mohammed's family; the gathering is the funeral for his daughter, who had been the suicide bomber of the previous night. Disgusted, Erin takes herself off to sit by herself on the roof, overlooked by a military watch-tower. A young girl pulls her in, miming that it is not safe. In her room, full of things which are almost all pink, the girl gets Erin to brush her hair, then beads and braids Erin's: it was what she used to do for her sister. That night there is shooting; Erin comforts the girl, Samira, as the house comes under automatic gunfire. Later, she is woken by arguing from downstairs. The son, who is with Hamas, is brandishing a gun and telling Omar, a Fatah member, to go. But as Omar explains this to Erin the house is raided by Israeli soldiers. Omar and the son run off, while Erin and the family are confined in a bedroom. An IDF officer takes Erin's name and address, while in the background the son is marched away. In the morning, the IDF are turning over the house. Eliza appears, summoned to deal with Erin as a favour to her father. She is furious with Erin, but softens a little over a cigarette with her friend.

Len finds Hassan, gun in hand with a small armed group of Arabs, under fire from a sniper. Len takes charge and leads them to outflank the sniper, only to find when they corner him that it is Jackie. He leads the group under fire through the gardens and backstreets, shooting another sniper with Jackie's rifle, until they can see the sea. Len will stay and fight, if Hassan will go to the docks. But as Hassan sets out to cross a last piece of open ground, he is caught by a bullet. Coughing up blood, he dies telling Len to give the key back to his father: "promise me", leaving Len distraught. Back at the docks, he tries to find Mohammed; but at the quayside, his search still unfinished, he is caught by two military police tipped off by Alec to make sure he gets home, and arrested.

IDF soldiers come and take Samira. Eliza explains they want her for a human shield when they go to occupy the brother's house. As Samira becomes frantic, Erin offers that they take her too: Samira will be calmer. They walk to the house, passing a group of soldiers with explosives going in the other direction. There they are confined in the room of a bedridden old woman, who tells Erin she learnt her English from the British. She gets Erin to bring an album containing a photograph of herself with her family and one of those British. It is the photograph of Len with Mohammed and his family outside the house -- this is Mohammed's daughter Jawda. She has fond memories of Len, but her father was angry with him for many years. "The sergeant promised he would bring him to us safely. But her never did." Erin produces the key. Jawda seems unimpressed, but as soldiers come in she clutches it in her hand. The IDF are laying explosives in the house. Erin finds a toolbox, and chains herself and Samira to a pillar. The IDF commander calmly tells Eliza to get a cutter. Erin tries to talk her out of it, but Eliza tells her quietly "I've got no choice". Outside, Erin finds Jawda being loaded into an ambulance, as first one and then the second house are blown up. A bulldozer moves in to clear the rubble. In the debris Erin retrieves some trinkets and a necklace and the photograph album; then, as the bulldozer bears down on her, she stands resolute, her gaze steady. But the bulldozer stops, and in the ambulance she is able to hand Jawda the photograph album. However, an IDF soldier forcibly takes the box with the necklace: it must be searched. Erin starts to remonstrate, but she is siezed by another fit, and passes out. Briefly Eliza, still her friend, swims into vision; then Erin is back in Caesarea, gathering her things. Taking her leave of Eliza's tight-lipped parents, Erin thanks them: she "learned a lot". Paul is warmer, hoping she may be back - there's a "lot to be done".

As she flies out, Erin returns to the last page of Len's diary. He is leaving Palestine on a Navy ship, locked in a cell. The Jews have their "precious state", he writes, but it has been born "in violence and cruelty to its neighbours. I'm not sure how it can hope to thrive." For himself, he wishes one day he could get the key back to Mohammed, though he's not sure he could face him.

At the airport, Erin surprises and overwhelms her mother with the intensity of her embrace. In the hospital, she holds her grandfather's hand, and tells him she has given Jawda the key -- she hopes that is all right. A single tear runs down his face, and her own eyes also fill with tears.

Production

The serial was filmed entirely in Israel, with a predominantly Israeli crew and through Israeli production company Lama Films; something very unusual for a UK television drama production. According to Kosminsky the team also looked at Morocco, Cyprus, Southern Spain and Tunisia, and could have recreated the 1940s sequences there; but nowhere else would have replicated the "buildings, range of cultures or topography" of modern-day Israel. The early scene of the flat in Leeds was created in an Israeli studio. Everything else was shot on location in and around Jerusalem, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Caesarea, Acre, Givat Brenner, Ein Hod, Peqi'in, Ramla and Beit Gemal in a 68 day schedule involving 180 separate different locations. Ben Gurion Airport stood in for Heathrow, and the bombed rubble of the King David Hotel was filmed against a blue screen in a car park in Petach Tikva. Part of the Old City in Jerusalem stood in for Nablus in the West Bank, the Hebron-set scenes were filmed in Acre, while Gaza was represented by Jisr al-Zarqa, "reputed to be the poorest town in Israel" according to Kosminsky. The paratroopers' base at Stella Maris was a challenge to find, but eventually the monastery at Beit Gemal was used and proved very accommodating. Period military vehicles were also a challenge to source without shipping them in at prohibitive expense; the tracked armoured vehicle used in the series was an amalgam of parts from five different vehicles found in a junkyard, cobbled together into one that worked.

Filming used conventional Super 16mm film, which was then processed and edited in England. The cinematographer, David Higgs, had been keen to try the new Red One high resolution digital camera. However the team were concerned by potentially limited contrast ratio using digital – a serious consideration in the strong Mediterranean light; and that its potential bulkiness might inhibit Kosminsky's trademark extensive use of hand-held camera to follow the action. It was also felt that relying on comparatively simple well-known technology would be a good idea when operating so far from home. Ironically, however, the reliance on film led to a number of scenes having to be re-mounted after film fogging went undetected for a whole week when it was impossible to get daily film rushes back to London because of the air travel disruption caused by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland. Extensive use was also made of CGI and digital post-production, which was by no means limited to the café explosion, the destruction at the King David Hotel, and the refugee ship of would-be immigrants. A particular challenge was how to realise the events at Bergen-Belsen. The film-makers considered and rejected a number of options, including live-action and CGI, before reluctantly deciding to fall back on archive black-and-white library footage; only to come to the view that the resulting sequence had more artistic and moral power than anything they might ever have been able to create in its stead.

Reception

The first episode was reviewed widely and generally received a very positive initial notice, although A.A. Gill writing in the Sunday Times was unimpressed. The Daily Express called it “...a little burning bush of genius in the desert of well-intentioned TV dramas...”, The Daily Telegraph said the programme would richly deserve any Baftas that came its way, and Caitlin Moran in The Times called it "almost certainly the best drama of the year". By the second episode Andrew Billen, writing in The Times, was concerned that both Len and Erin were meeting from the Arabs a "little too much kindness for the comfort of all of us hoping that Kosminsky will parcel out recriminations in exactly equal proportions"; but nonetheless applauded the "immersive and emotional" quality of the series.

The serial as a whole was praised by Christina Patterson in The Independent who said it was “...beautifully shot and extremely well written. It is also extremely balanced...”; and Rachel Cooke in the New Statesman and The Observer, where she said it was “...the best thing you are likely to see on TV this year, if not this decade.” There was also praise from Stephen Kelly in Tribune, Harriet Sherwood and Ian Black, Jerusalem correspondent and Middle East editor of The Guardian respectively, and David Chater, previewing the serial for The Times, who called it courageous and applauded its lack of didacticism.

London free newspaper Metro felt that the third episode dragged, having warmly received the first two parts; but then praised the series as a whole. Previewing the final episode, The Times said it was "ambitious" and "packs a considerable punch"; Time Out chose the programme as its pick of the day, and gave it a four-star recommendation, calling it "brave filmmaking and a brave, entirely successful commission". Anthony Andrew in The Observer acknowledged some flaws, but found it still "an exceptional drama".

A press attaché at the Israeli embassy in London however condemned the drama to the Jewish Chronicle as the worst example of anti-Israel propaganda he had ever seen on television, saying it "created a new category of hostility towards Israel". The Zionist Federation and the Board of Deputies of British Jews both also lodged letters of complaint. The Jewish Chronicle itself took the view that rather than "attempt to tell both sides of what is a complex and contentious story", the series had turned out to be "a depressing study in how to select historical facts to convey a politically loaded message". Jewish history expert David Cesarani criticised the series for not bringing out underlying selfish geopolitical motives behind British policy, saying that Kosminsky had "turned the British, who were the chief architects of the Palestine tragedy, into its prime victims...Ultimately, Kosminsky turns a three-sided conflict into a one-sided rant".

Overnight ratings for The Promise were 1.8 million for the first episode, followed by 1.2 million, 1.3 million, and 1.2 million viewers for the three remainding episodes. Consolidated ratings, which include time-shifted and online viewing, generally added approximately 0.5 million to these overnight figures.

See also

• British-Zionist conflict

External links

• Vorlage:Imdb title
• Official website
• Article by Peter Kosminsky
• Observer feature
• Palestine, ParaData website, Trustees of the Airborne Forces Museum, Duxford. Documents from the 6th Airborne Division's real-life stationing in Palestine.
• Yoav Etiel, Jisr al-Zarqa on the way to Hollywood Vorlage:He icon, Magazin #209, 30 April 2010. Article on The Promise and A Bottle in the Gaza Sea both filming in Jisr al-Zarqa for Gaza. Behind the scenes photos: page 1, page 2, page 3