Never mind the cinematic problem with switching between time periods, instead focus on the problem of offering up an interpretation of history this is stewed in contemporary sensibilities. No wonder hate crimes against Jewish people have increased - this biased portrayal helps to explain why. It was laboured and obvious - though the amazing coincidences made it more Alice in Wonderland than Alice attempting to illustrate how the Israeli's just following orders... the one sided attempt to portray Jews as little better than Nazi's was crude and inaccurate. The other reviews on here suggesting it was "historically accurate" need to take a closer look at history, or try dropping the one sided interpretation. It's a shame the director did not do the same before making this film... oh hang on, it wouldn't have been made if it didn't portray Jews as the victims turned villains. I am no defender of the Zionist position on the occupied territories - it is an illegal occupation - but this series lacked balances and that makes it part of the myth making that fuels hate.

I come from Palestine, when I started watching this mini-series, I was mentally prepared for the common western biased production of The Palestine cause, I am surprised at the end, that this was not only unbiased to any party, but also, shed more in my conscious on the British position, the Jews misery in Germany and later their perspective to occupy our lands and renaming our country. The drama was great, not a common Hollywood Bad Guys Vs.Good Guys BS. It gave me an urge to watch again and again and show it to my parents, relatives who are all refugees, a great and intelligent production, I strongly recommend it to anyone. If I was not Palestinian, or involved in this story, I still find a great story line, intelligent script and acting.

A great piece of intelligent television. Biased? Didn't seem to spare anyone. Pretty much every group was shown acting horrendously, but also how much of those actions arose/arise from the context, and were compelling and difficult to avoid. Palestinians, British, the Isrealis, none demonised despite the awful things they all did and do, and as such it was really a remarkable feat. It is very hard to find that middle ground, (and that is also the problem for those in Isreal who want peace too). Great performances from Christian Cooke and Clare Foy. Clare in particular played the not terribly likable ingénue with distinction and subtlety. It isn't Hollywood, not evil v good, no heroes and no villains. The violence is shown as solving nothing and just leads to more vile acts of attrition. The story that holds it together has some artificiality, but does manage to run the two threads, 1947-8 and 2010 together very well.

I very much enjoyed parts of the Promise, but thought a great deal of it was basically crap.The immediate post war aftermath in Palestine is a very good setting for a film/TV series and is a little known period in history for the general public. I thought the story set there was very compelling, with a good protagonist and remained balanced until the final episode.In contrast the framing device of the girl reading her grandfather's diary was poorly constructed and meant we had to spend far too much time in the company of a girl whose only expression was a sullen pout. At times this became absolutely ludicrous, like her reason for wanting to visit Hebron 'to see how her grandfather's story turned out'. It's not that big a diary, unless you are the world's slowest reader you could read it cover to cover in a few hours. It was also a far less balanced story, with characters presenting as fact only one side of deeply controversial issues. Take the security barrier, condemned as useless for security reasons, and yet suicide bombings plummeted after its construction.Talking about bias, we then come to the final episode, which presented the start of the arab-israeli war of 1948 as purely of poor helpless Arabs being slaughtered by Israelis. Both sides committed atrocities against civilians in the build up to the war and the war itself saw 2,400 Jewish civilians lose their lives. A far more interesting story might how a militia of only 30,000 Jews (at the start of the war) held back the armies of the Arab world.In conclusion a good historical drama let down by its bias and framing device.