- Radio Times
- Review by:
- David Butcher
Tonight’s concluding film is brutally sad. Jimmy McGovern and his co-writers generally like to put their characters in a vice and then crank the handle with a twist of the plot. This week their victim is played by Anna Maxwell Martin: by the end you may be in pieces.
Maxwell Martin is prison officer and mum Tina. When we meet her she is taking Stephen, the teenage hero of last week’s episode, to prison. Stephen has mental health problems, you’ll recall, and ended up stabbing his stepmother as a result. Tina is concerned for his wellbeing — as well she might be, in the chaotic pit of horrors that is the prison block where she works.
What evolves from there takes in the failings of the prison system, institutional cover-ups and shocking agonies for Tina. Ewen Bremner is superb as her boss, while John Bishop, so good last week, returns as Stephen’s dad — and is even better.
About this programme
4/4. Anna Maxwell Martin stars in the last of Jimmy McGovern's single dramas, which in a break from the usual format provides a link with last week's episode. She stars as happily married mother-of-three Tina, who works as an officer in a young offenders' institution. One cold morning she oversees the transfer of a new inmate but her sense that things are not quite right turns out to be an understatement when the boy commits suicide soon after and she has to face his distraught father. However, her problems have only just begun, and after a series of betrayals and cover-ups Tina becomes the victim of a terrible crime forcing her to take the law into her own hands - and leading her eventually into the dock herself. Ewen Bremner and John Bishop co-star. Last in the series.
Cast and crew
Cast
- Tina
- Anna Maxwell Martin
- Frank
- Ewen Bremner
- Stephen Cartwright
- Robert Sheehan
- Peter Cartwright
- John Bishop
- Ray
- Sam Hazeldine
- Judge
- Michael Maloney
- Jonno
- Robert Haythorne
- Rocky
- Joe Doherty
- Spider
- Kieran Hardcastle
- Gary
- Paul Popplewell
- Ferris
- Kevin Doyle
- Bill
- Steve Garti
- Jake Murray
- Thomas Brodie Sangster
- Prisoner one
- James McGlynn
- Prisoner two
- Reece Douglas
- Prosecuting counsel
- Andrew Readman
- Heating engineer
- Matthew Ganley
- Minicab driver
- Martin Walsh
Crew
- Director
- Ashley Pearce
- Producer
- Sita Williams
- Writer
- Jimmy McGovern
- Writer
- Isabelle Grey
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