The two-part documentary explores the part the Sinn Féin president played during the Northern Ireland peace process.
He's seen Irish history created before his eyes, his career rise up through the ranks of Irish politics, an assassination attempt on his life – and now we get to see what it's like to actually be Gerry Adams.
A TV3 documentary airing on Wednesday night shows Vincent Browne exploring the part Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams played during the Troubles, his role in the Northern Ireland peace process, while also examining both the politics of Adams and the party he leads.
A controversial character in Irish history, Adams has been at the centre of far more scandals than your average politician.
Browne and Adams first met some 40 years ago. In the two-part programme, Browne travels to Belfast and further afield to chart Adams' every move during the Northern Ireland conflict, his role in the peace process and how, under his leadership, Sinn Féin has transformed itself into one of the largest parties both in the North and the Republic of Ireland.
A Belfast-native, Adams hails from a staunch republican background. His father was an IRA man who was jailed for eight years for his role in an ambush and his grandfather, also called Gerry Adams, was a member of the IRB.
Adams became an active Republican from early on and rose to prominence as a key figure in the 1960s civil rights movement in the North.
He was subsequently charged with IRA membership in 1978, but the case was then dropped due to insufficient evidence.
Adams has always publicly maintained that he was never an IRA member.
Commenting on Gerry Adams, Browne said: "I have known Gerry Adams for over forty years and have found him one of the most fascinating people in Irish public life during that time.
"Of course he was very much involved in the IRA campaign of atrocity, murder, and criminality but from the early 1980s he began to seek a way out of violence and bring the Republican movement with him.
"Against the odds he was successful. Without him, the atrocities almost certainly would have happened anyway but without him peace wouldn’t have happened when it did."
Gerry Adams: War, Peace and Politics airs on Wednesday, 7 February at 9pm and Thursday, 8 February at 9pm on TV3.
