Alan McKee
Set in a post-Troubles Northern Ireland, The Truth Commissioner follows the fictional story of Henry Stanfield, played by Roger Allam, a career diplomat who has just been appointed as Truth Commissioner to Northern Ireland. Eager to make good as a peacemaker, the Prime Minister urges a commission following the South African model of Truth and Reconciliation. But, though Stanfield starts bravely, he quickly uncovers some bloody and inconvenient truths about those now running the country; truths which none of those in power are prepared to have revealed.
Born under the Christmas Star, Noelle believes she has the gift to perform miracles, so when conniving developer McKerrod threatens her peaceful life she and her friends determine to use this gift to thwart his plans and save their village.
Jack Kelly is a successful novelist who leads a reclusive life in his apartment in Paris. His first novel, Made in Belfast, was a critical and commercial success – there was only one problem: it exposed the private lives and innermost secrets of his close friends and family, and none of them have spoken to him since he ran away. But when circumstances conspire to bring him back to his hometown for a few days, he decides to spend that time putting things right with the friends he betrayed, the brother he abandoned, and the fiancée he jilted.
Frankie is a car park attendant at the spectacular Giant’s Causeway in Co. Antrim. His friend Cathy and her husband Paul are in trouble. Nevertheless as Frankie always says, "Something will turn up!"
In a misguided attempt to protect his family and pay back gambling debts to the local Mobster, Jimbo robs a fish market, which is coincidentally owned by the same Mobster. On the run, Jimbo is cornered in a local curio shop, where he takes hostage an assortment of colourful characters, including a man who may be his illegitimate father. Surrounded by the Police, the SAS and the Mobster's crew, the young man must find a way out of his precarious predicament with the help of his oddball captives.
Kyle is loyal to his wife, his best mate and his boss in the Ulster Defence Union – and they love him as a husband, a brother and a son – but, with changing times and the emerging peace process, Kyle finds himself lost in the shadows of transition, uncertainty, and betrayal. In a world turned upside down, peace and brutality walk side-by-side, while love and loyalty are sacrificed to the new order. "As the Beast Sleeps" is set in Belfast's Protestant Rathcoole housing estate and explores with an up-to-the-minute urgency, the fragmentation within an extended family of loyalists in the context of the current cease-fire.
Belfast, Christmas 1999. A poor, badly dressed woman is half walking, half stumbling down the road. She is tearful and her behaviour is so disturbed that passers-by look furtively at her before hurrying on. Her walk is purposeful though. She is hurrying to go somewhere specific. She stumbles towards a church that is lit up. As she approaches it we see a sign outside announcing "SERVICE FOR PEACE Belfast Christmas together. All Denominations, 8pm"
High school student tries to improve soccer skills by practicing dance and falls for his dance partner.
When Fergus and Wesley get in the bad books of a local rough in their home town in Northern Ireland they decide to flee to Australia. After making a new life for themselves in Sydney they soon outstay their visas and must go on the run again, this time from the immigration officials.
Rosie and Vincent know each other for ten years, and are married for five. She doesn't like her job, he isn't too pleased working with her dad. They're trying to have a baby. One morning Benoit, a Frenchman and former pen pal of Rosie, whom she never met, comes to visit. Did Rosie love him? Does she love him now?
Belfast 1972: The politically naive Bernie is trying to bring up a normal family in less than normal surroundings. Her best friend is accidentally shot dead by the IRA, and her neighbours are constantly raided by the army. In this climate of fear she stands up and condemns the murders. Criticising both factions, her call for a ceasefire is interpreted as an attack against the IRA, and as her peace movement takes momentum, she and her family are placed in the frontline.
Leo Doyle, a convicted IRA murderer, is released into the community after 14 years in prison on a scheme to rehabilitate former terrorists. He soon finds that the ceasefire has robbed him of both purpose and identity. Relationships with his family are difficult and reach boiling point when they find that he has rekindled his affair with a former fiancee Roisin, now married with three children.
