Yes, TV shows are TV shows. One can fixate on tactical facts and miss the larger picture, or one can step back a bit and consider the nature, rather than the character of a conflict from a different perspective.
Northern Ireland was Britain's first modern colony. The resistance insurgency (warfare) against the English occupiers, and the revolutionary insurgency (illegal democracy) against those who collaborate with the occupiers are two separate conflicts, each very unique in nature, while often very similar in character. More accurately they are two distinct lines of motivation. One insurgent may be 20% motivated by the occupation, and 80% motivated by the fundamental illegitimacy of his government. Another may be the opposite in his motivations. They both may look the same, adhere to the same ideology, and apply the same tactics. That is why the distinction must be made and accounted for at the strategic level, because at the tactical level the distinctions are largely moot.
Likewise Algeria. Galula commented in his classic on COIN how most of the insurgency was against the largely local government of Algeria, and not against the French themselves. Like many colonial powers, he rationalized this as a sign of the relative goodness of what the French brought to Algeria, and the frustrations of the population with the ineffectiveness of the Algerian government. A less biased perspective recognizing the different nature of the two forms of insurgency and recognizing the presumptive drivers of resistance against any foreign occupation (again, physical or by policy); and against any local government deriving its legitimacy more from some foreign power than from the population it claims to serve, would have made his book a more strategic guide.
And yes, the same is indeed true of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
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