Narrated by Liam Neeson, The Maze €1. It opens with what looks like Super 8 film footage of loyalist prisoners marching around their compound in what was then Long Kesh Prison some time in the early 1970s. Loyalists love to march and imprisonment could not inhibit this instinct.
This is followed by the reminiscences of the leader of the loyalist inmates, Gusty Spence, all geniality and speaking like an old soldier about soldierly exploits. Spence points out that when he was flown by British army helicopter to Long Kesh there were guard dogs, German-manufactured razor wire and the army was in control. "What else could you have called it but a prisoner of war camp?" The UVF leader, who had served in the British army, knew there was a need for discipline among his men and insisted on reveille at 8 a.m. then three- to five-mile runs before mess parade every morning. There was equally strong discipline in the republican compounds, though republicans did not have the loyalists' love of marching. From the outset, the Maze was an exceptional place. Internment in 1971 gave it its mystique. It inspired poems and songs such as The Men Behind The Wire. Loyalists and republicans brokered agreements to fight the system. Interviews with ex-prisoners who were early inmates give the impression that - if they did not quite have a happy time there - they certainly did have some laughs. There was free association; they wore their own clothes and busied themselves digging escape tunnels. Spence recollects the Provo tunnellers going astray and inadvertently digging their way into one of the loyalist tunnels.
The compounds - old Royal Air Force Nissen huts were, in fact, breeding grounds for insurgency - the universities of terror as they were dubbed. Eventually the British government determined to quash this and the "criminalisation" policy was introduced.
The Maze shows just how wrong a prison policy can be. Father Denis Faul points out in his contribution that British officials, within a few hours of arriving in Northern Ireland, were making decisions that were producing mayhem inside and outside the Maze.
The programme contains harrowing descriptions and film of the republican protests against the criminalisation policy. The "Blanket Protest" in which prisoners refused to wear prison uniforms was followed by the "Dirty Protest" during which the prisoners smeared their cell walls with excrement.
These were followed by the hunger strikes of autumn 1980 when a group of IRA prisoners fasted nearly to death in pursuit of the "Five Demands" of political status. The Northern Ireland Office allowed a television camera into film Brendan Hughes, leader of the first hunger strike, and Raymond McCartney. The young IRA man, McCartney, lies in his cell, gaunt, bearded, with long matted hair and looking uncomfortably like images of the crucified Christ. He speaks to the camera in a soft Derry accent, saying he and his comrades are not criminals but political prisoners and deserve political status.
The first hunger strike was called off but was followed by a second protest led by Bobby Sands and Francis Hughes. They were to die, along with five other IRA and three INLA men. When the nationalist MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone died, Sands was elected in his place and died three weeks later in the prison hospital.
One of the survivors, Paddy Quinn, followed his colleagues to the brink of death, at which point his mother intervened and asked that he be revived. Father Faul had secretly organised the prisoners' mothers to stop the protest. The narrative continues past the hunger strike through the mass IRA breakout of 1983 to the Peace Process. Again, the prisoners on both sides played key roles in backing the pro-ceasefire elements within their organisations. The prisoners' support was absolutely key to the ceasefires as they were the consciences of the paramilitary organisations. Without their consent, the process stood no chance of fulfilment.
Michael Stone, the UDA prison leader and one of the ultimate hardliners, backed the process. He also speaks with some admiration of Mo Mowlam's highly controversial decision to enter the loyalist wings of the Maze in 1998 to seek support for the Belfast Agreement. The then Secretary of State spoke of how she decided to treat them not as prisoners or something sub-human but as people. They were impressed.
There are some minor historical mistakes. The 1980 hunger strike was not the first time since the 1940s that the IRA had embarked on this form of protest. Two other IRA prisoners died on hunger strike in England in the mid-1970s - Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg. Gaughan died on hunger strike in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight in June 1974 and Stagg died in Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire in February 1976. Also, the INLA, not the IRA, killed Margaret Thatcher's friend and Tory Party spokesman on Northern Ireland, Airey Neave. But there is a very large story compressed into this single programme. It also is one of the best documentaries yet made about the Troubles.
True Lives: The Maze will be shown on Tuesday, on RTE 1, at 10 p.m.
Jim Cusack is the Security Correspondent of The Irish Times