The elegiac background music trailing pictures of Abbeville was reminiscent of the melancholic mood at the end of Barry Lyndon, the Stanley Kubrick film of an 18th century Irish adventurer based on Thackeray's novel.
The four-part Haughey series told, within the limitations of the medium and the time available, an equally extraordinary story. It was neither a black-and-white morality tale nor a rehabilitation.
Ireland is harsh and unforgiving towards its fallen leaders. Yet throughout the country there are recusants who still believe that the good things done by Charlie Haughey outweigh in importance the bad.
For someone credited with being a friend of the rich, he did a remarkable amount for the poor. His social welfare record is well remembered. The free travel scheme for pensioners stands for the rest.
The Oireachtas Joint Finance Committee was recently reminded that the disabled drivers' scheme was introduced in his 1968 budget. However, Haughey was scornful of describing Fianna Fáil as a socialist party.
Napoleon, when first consul said: "I want there to be rich people, because it is the only way of ensuring the subsistence of the poor."
Haughey admired the sheer number of wealthy persons in America, and wished to see that replicated in Ireland, as is now happening. He clearly wanted to be one himself, and took routes that, when discovered, wrong-footed those who in his defence had tried to rationalise his private situation.
His determination, with Ray MacSharry's, that re-emerged in 1982, after a disillusioning false start in 1980, decisively redressed the public finances from 1987. Cementing it with social partnership, they set the economy on a growth path which continues to this day. Only the health cuts went too far, and laid up long-term problems.
Few deny his political flair for the innovative change that made all the difference. The 1969 Finance Act helped create a world-class horse-breeding industry. Many of his most trenchant critics benefit from the tax-free scheme for writers and artists. Irish publishers have never looked back, since books were zero-rated for VAT in 1982. Section 23 of the 1981 Finance Act is largely responsible for the plentiful supply of apartment buildings. Dermot Desmond stated in Business and Finance (October 21st, 2004) that "no other politician in Ireland would have built the IFSC but Charles Haughey".
His gift for raising money was put to good effect, when he persuaded EC Commission president Jacques Delors to include Ireland with the Mediterranean countries in the greatly enhanced structural funds accompanying the single market. His rapport with Mitterrand and Kohl, whose reputations have not suffered as seriously from later scandalous revelations, helped ensure one of Ireland's best European presidencies in 1990.
Kohl, chancellor of a reunited Germany, later paid tribute in the Dáil to Haughey's support.
An important reason why Haughey was widely feared and distrusted was because the arms trial acquittal cast him in a republican mould, where previously only a Lemass-style pragmatism had been evident.
The rights and wrongs of that confused period, which placed him badly offside, are anything but straightforward or exclusive to one party or another.
Geraldine Kennedy rightly credited him in the summits with Mrs Thatcher in 1980 with establishing equality for the first time in Anglo-Irish relations. His inability to deflect Mrs Thatcher's General Maxwell-style tendencies which created martyrs (and two TDs and an MP) of the hunger strikers cost him power in 1981, a lesson not forgotten on his return. Derived from his Northern parentage, there was a visceral side to his understanding of Northern Ireland.
When Garret FitzGerald, in his 1981 constitutional crusade, referred to the Mayo librarian case (where Éamon de Valera in opposition supported objections to a female Protestant appointment in 1931), Haughey retorted privately: "And what was James Craig doing at that time?"
From August 1981, he was determined not to leave his republican flank exposed again, even if it brought him into political confrontation with Britain or created difficulties with softer nationalist opinion.
He made no secret of his wish to achieve progress towards a united Ireland, clearly demarcated from Britain.
The price of an over-trenchant opposition to the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement was domestic, the formation of the PDs and ultimately, coalition. Fumbling of a question on its renegotiation in a TV debate with Garret FitzGerald helped make an overall majority in the February 1987 election elusive.
Fr Alex Reid now claims that Charles Haughey, John Hume and Gerry Adams were on the brink of meeting before the Enniskillen bomb. Dublin's participation in the peace process in 1988 had to begin at a lower level. Dermot Ahern, now Minister for Foreign Affairs, then a newly-elected TD for Louth, led an exploratory three-man party delegation to meet the Sinn Féin leadership secretly in a Dundalk monastery in 1988, parallel to the public SDLP - SF dialogue.
Direct talks ceased, once it was clear that no early ceasefire was in prospect. No appeasement was involved in that.
Early drafts of what became the Downing Street Declaration were prepared by and with John Hume in Haughey's office in the autumn of 1991, despite his growing political difficulties, an initiative that Albert Reynolds pressed forward with until it achieved an IRA ceasefire. Participation in the Maastricht Treaty, a renewed coalition programme with the PDs, and a second social partnership agreement (the Pesp) were other fruits amidst a turbulent end-period.
The argument today is that Charles Haughey did the State some disservice, by acting in ways inconsistent with his position.
A culture of unacceptable practices was bred that no one, least of all a successor, could stand over. However, democracy was never in danger. A cost-benefit analysis of his entire contribution would depend on the weighting attached to different factors.
Despite everything, much was done in the public realm of lasting practical value. Very few who worked for him in that sphere do not still have some pride in having done so.