Sunday Independent (Ireland)

CATCH-UP TV - IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...

- EMILY HOURICAN

Doing Money RTE Player, until November 27 This RTE/BBC co-production written by Gwyneth Hughes and directed by Lynsey Miller is no easy watch. It is brutal and disturbing. Worst of all, it is true.

Here, Ana (Anca Dumitra, left) is a twentysome­thing Romanian woman living in London, working as a cleaner while studying to be a nurse. Until she is snatched off the street in broad daylight by a gang of eastern-European sex trafficker­s who know her mother’s name and address, and threaten to harm her if Ana doesn’t co-operate. They take her to Ireland, strip her of passport, spectacles and phone, and, as easily as that, she is a sex slave. “Nobody knows where I am,” she says in a voiceover. “Not even me.” The men she encounters are indifferen­t to the fact that she is a prisoner, forced to have sex with them, even the ‘‘decent’’ ones, ie the ones who aren’t sadists or psychopath­s, and the police, when they raid the brothel, are almost powerless in the face of terrified adult women insisting they are there of their own free will

This is based on the true story of ‘‘Anna’’, who escaped sexual slavery in Belfast, and, unusually, went to the police, gave evidence, and got her captors jailed. She also provided testimony that helped through the Human Traffickin­g and Exploitati­on Act — the first new law against slavery in the UK for nearly 200 years. Dark Heart Virgin Media Player, until November 22, episodes 1&2 Based on the Will Wagstaffe novels by Adam Creed and created by Chris Lang (Unforgotte­n, Innocent), this has Tom Riley as DI Will Wagstaffe, a detective haunted by the unsolved double murder of his parents when he was just 16 years old, who begins to investigat­e a series of horrifying attacks on people who have been accused, but never convicted, of child abuse.

The excellent Charlotte Riley (no relation) appears as Will’s sister Juliette, while Anjli Mohindra is DC Josie Chancellor.

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