Watching the BBC’s new documentary "First Communion", I was struck by the image of a child’s Star Wars stormtrooper toy adorned with a rosary: was it a sly dig, I wondered, casting the Church as a crumbling institution governed by dark, druidical megalomaniacs? Mercifully, the show is tender-hearted enough elsewhere.
It follows the lives of four young children – Niall in County Armagh, Tia in West Belfast, Seren in Formby, and Magdalena in London – working towards their first Holy Communion amid the unfolding drama of family illnesses, personal doubts and unresolved generational trauma.
