Free Nelson Mandela review – this gripping documentary pulls no punches

A revelatory look at the sprawling tale of the decades-long struggle against apartheid. It’s a nuanced tale that brutally emphasises the personal cost of Mandela’s resistance

Nelson Mandela died in December 2013 but he had long before been canonised as a secular saint. Many people – particularly on the political right – found it convenient to forget that for decades they had regarded him as a terrorist. He had become the world’s grandad: an icon of spiritual generosity and reconciliation.

This three-part series directed by James Rogan ends in 1994, when Mandela became president of South Africa and that process of sanctification was under way. It’s gripping, it’s revelatory and it pulls no punches. It evokes the grim reality faced by Mandela and his allies during their decades-long struggle against apartheid. It’s a world of white South Africans suggesting their Black compatriots had “only just come down from the trees”. Of British young Conservatives with their “Hang Nelson Mandela” posters. Of physical violence, emotional torment and awful economic unfairness.