Brian Feeney

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.

An in-depth look at news stories. Documentaries that take you behind the scenes giving an insight into people's lives or institutions.

Mairéad Farrell was shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988 along with two other unarmed members of the IRA in one of the most controversial incidents arising from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She had just been released from prison the year before after serving ten years for causing an explosion at an hotel near Belfast. The killing of the three provoked an international outcry and eventual enquiry. Due to her youth, her gender and her stature within the IRA, Mairéad Farrell was, unsurprisingly, quickly subsumed into the pantheon of Irish republican martyrs. But behind the mythologizing and demonisation of the time, there was also a real person, a flesh and blood young woman who was prepared to kill and die for her beliefs.

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.

An in-depth look at news stories. Documentaries that take you behind the scenes giving an insight into people's lives or institutions.