TV Review: Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland is mesmerising storytelling

"Like a lot of people my age, I think I have a good handle on what happened from 1968 on up the north - but I wasn’t there and these people were."

One Upon a Time in Northern Ireland: Billy, civil rights campaigner, republican and witness to Bloody Sunday

Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland (RTÉ Player and RTÉ One, Thursday) starts slowly and awkwardly. 

A woman in a green dress, Fiona, walks to a chair and settles herself before telling us that she had been a finalist in Miss Ireland in the 1980s.