Rebel Heart is a 2001 British Television drama miniseries starring James D'Arcy as the fictional Ernie Coyne, an Irish nationalist.

Coyne's nationalistic views are contrasted against the working class marxism of the other characters, including Tom O'Toole (Vincent Regan) and Kelly (Frank Laverty).

One of the sisters kills the machine gunner thus stopping the fire that is pinning the republican soldiers down and allowing them to fall back to the College of Surgeons.

The episode finishes with a number of the rebel leaders, such as Patrick Pearse and Thomas Clarke, being tried by military tribunal and executed for treason (for leading a rebellion while the United Kingdom was at war with Imperial Germany).

He has secured a place at the prestigious Trinity College Dublin, leading to the contempt of some of his working-class fellow Easter Rising veterans.

Sinn Féin won the election in a landslide victory, often for uncontested seats, and this gave a more official nature to their claim to speak for the people of Ireland.

A number of events such as the burial of County Meath militant Thomas Ashe, who had died on hunger strike, persuaded Coyne and many other Irishmen to take up arms against the government forces.

Arriving in West Cork, Coyne is angered to find the local movement disorganised and ill-equipped with commanders who are halfhearted and reluctant to disturb their quiet lives in the small community.

With a new-found assertiveness, Coyne re-invigorates the recruits, stealing rifles from a British unit and later mounting a successful ambush of an army patrol.

Coyne swells with pride at his leadership abilities and he cockily seduces the daughter of a farmer who shelters him and several of his men, an act he soon regrets as he remembers his feelings for Ita.

Ita, whose family are in Belfast, is angry and bitter, believing that the new government has sold them out, condemning them to live as a persecuted minority in the Unionist-dominated north.

Arriving in Dublin in 1922, Coyne, Ita, Kelly and Ursula are disheartened to see the Free State already becoming a traditional-style government based on wealth and power, ending the dream of a worker's republic.

As fighting breaks out across Dublin, beginning the Irish Civil War, a distraught and angry O'Toole leads his troops in pursuit of the rebels, hunting them down ruthlessly.