A version of this article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 3 June 2017.
BROKEN: Tuesday, BBC One
THE HANDMAID’S TALE: Sunday, Channel 4
The
mere idea of rugged Sean Bean playing a troubled Catholic priest in a grey
northern town sounds like a parody of Jimmy McGovern’s morally righteous social
realist oeuvre.
Add
Anna Friel – who, like Bean, has worked with McGovern before - as a working-class
single mum struggling to support three children, and you’d be forgiven – nay,
absolved – for assuming that his latest drama, BROKEN, is a perfunctory self-tribute to the man who brought us the
peerless likes of Cracker, Hillsborough
and The Street.
Well,
you’d be wrong. And yes, I’m aware you’re being corrected for making an
assumption I’ve just conjured on your behalf, but no one ever said life was
fair. If McGovern has taught us anything, it’s that.
This
poetic series is the raw, compassionate, heart-wrenching apotheosis of
everything one of our greatest - and angriest - dramatists has been wrestling
with on television over the last 30 years.
Bean
plays Michael, a tireless Good Samaritan whose private demons and loneliness
mirror the solitary anguish of the locals who turn to him in times of dire
need. We’re all broken in one way or another, but we rarely have the courage to
admit it. Softly-spoken Father Michael is there to listen and advise without
judgement.
A
damaged hero for our Godforsaken times, Michael acts as an emblem of
much-needed kindness in an increasingly selfish, heartless society; he’s
basically everything Gervais tried and spectacularly failed to achieve with Derek.
Michael
may be a somewhat idealised figure, but he’s rendered utterly convincing by
McGovern’s nuanced writing and Bean’s tender, understated performance.
Friel
also excels as a woman so desperate for money to feed her family, she makes the
terrible mistake of leaving her mother lying dead in bed for three days in
order to collect her pension.
McGovern
has a seemingly never-ending capacity for wringing tension and pathos from his
stock conceit of forcing desperate characters into ill-advised courses of
action. They’re tragic victims of circumstance, and always depicted as
three-dimensional beings.
The
trials of Father Michael and his flock allow the lapsed-Catholic writer to explore
his recurring themes of guilt and atonement, but they also provide a vehicle
for an attack on the injustice of poverty and the failure of every Tory
government to protect the most vulnerable members of society. The real broken
Britain.
Though
often accused of didacticism – usually by ghouls who lack his humanity -
McGovern always anchors his polemic in rich, riveting character drama leavened
by dry humour.
On
the eve of a pivotal General Election, a politically-charged McGovern psalm
espousing decency and tolerance is exactly what we need.
Still,
if you think the Dystopian present is frightening, it’s, well, it’s only
slightly less nightmarish than our old friend the Dystopian future.
A
serialised adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Margaret Atwood, THE HANDMAID’S TALE envisions a
near-future in which a totalitarian Christian government rules the United
States with a puritanical fist.
Catastrophic
environmental contamination has forced the few remaining fertile women into the
sexual servitude of the ruling elite (represented here by Joseph Fiennes and
his jutting beard).
This
bleak premise is given a suitably nervy, suffocating treatment in an intriguing,
visually striking drama starring Elisabeth Moss (aka Peggy from Mad Men) as a subjugated handmaid whose
inner monologue reveals an undimmed spirit.
It’s
a slow-burning, but potentially rewarding, commendably depressing and timely assault
on misogyny, fascism and religious fundamentalism.
If
you want a vision of the future, imagine Donald Trump sexually harassing a
woman forever.
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