Even though it is a work of fiction, The Promise—a four-part miniseries that aired last month on Great Britain’s public-owned but commercially sponsored Channel 4—is a strong candidate to redeem the perpetually abused category of reality TV. Weaving together the story of Len Matthews, a young sergeant serving in British Mandate Palestine in 1946, and his granddaughter Erin, a restless visitor to modern-day Israel, the series, eight years in the making, was shot entirely on location and features long stretches of dialogue, without translation or subtitles, in Hebrew and Arabic. Despite the occasional clunky plot turn and the artful cinematography—Israel frequently looks like a wild and oversaturated field of color hastily doodled by Matisse—the show often delivers the sort of emotional blows we associate not with television but with real life.
Which, Israel being the subject matter, is guaranteed to make some people mad. Amir Ofek, the press attaché at Israel’s embassy in London, told the Israeli press that the show is “an attempt to demonize Israelis” and the worst example of anti-Israeli propaganda he’d ever seen. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, England’s premier Jewish publication, one columnist argued that the series’ script could have been written by Fatah. The institutionalized Jewish community in England issued strongly worded press releases. Pundits in Israel shrieked. By the time the show had finished its run, more people had read about The Promise than had actually seen it.