Religion?
Was it just me, but was there no reference to religion in the first episode? Or did the writers just forget to put in why the whole Civil War began?
Smeg!
I suspect they went to school a few decades ago when a great many Western historians found it hard to believe that anybody really took religion seriously enough to fight and die for it, and therefore often assumed that religious unrest was a cover for political and/or economic issues*. If you have that mindset, and you're skimming through the Civil War just as a backstory for your heroine's highway robbery career, you aren't going to bother writing in riots over the prayerbook and church furnishings!
*Cf. for example Christopher Hibbert's "The Great Mutiny", published 1978. One of the grievances that precipitated the Indian Mutiny was the British authorities' suppressing of the madrassahs (Muslim religious schools). In his book Hibbert dismissed this as a "pretext"; evidently he found it impossible to imagine that Muslim feeling about this could really be strong enough to provoke civil unrest. We know differently now!
I do suppose that it would be particularly dull to insert all the religious conflict leading to the Civil War, I can see how explaining the Root and Branch Bill would be a bit flat in a period drama.
My problem was that they sort of made out that it was largely due to the Levellers that the war started. I remember a few references to 'grievences' but the screenplay seemed to identify John Lilburne as the 'leader' of the radicals in Parliament and not John Pym (who wasn't even mentioned), as if half of all MPs believed in some form of early communism and their aim was to commit regicide, (Cromwell himself didn't even support the kings execution until 26th December 1648)
Lilburne and the Levellers were made out to the catalyst in starting the war, when in fact they were a minority and not representative of MPs of the time.
Smeg!