If Bella doesn’t win every TV award going, I’ll eat my hat
Time
BBC1, Sunday
Shetland
BBC1, Wednesday
The second series of Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama, Time, is so devastatingly bleak that, after the first episode, you may consider watching a Ken Loach film just to cheer yourself up. In fact, it’s so gruelling you may even be tempted to stop watching altogether. But ever the professional, I ploughed on, and if you do keep going, I promise you will be rewarded by a remarkable, deeply affecting drama that’s 100% involving. Not everything on TV can be Mamma Mia! I Have A Dream, you know, and it is a titchy bit hopeful by the end. Get a grip. Do it.
The first series, which was also devastating, starred Stephen Graham and Seán Bean, and if you’re not still haunted by Bean’s ‘Yes boss’ to this very day you weren’t born right.
This starts afresh in a women’s prison and it really is terrifically cast, starring Tamara Lawrance, Jodie Whittaker and Bella Ramsey.
You know you can rely on Lawrance and Whittaker, but Ramsey is astounding, plus all the alternative words you will find listed in the thesaurus: dazzling, amazing, flabbergasting, etc. A truck should probably go to her house today and tip all the awards going on to her front lawn as it’ll save time later. If she doesn’t win at least 79 Baftas I will eat my hat, and also yours.
They play three inmates: Orla (Whittaker), Abi (Lawrance) and Kelsey (Ramsey). Orla has been given a six-month sentence for ‘fiddling the leccy’ and has been sent straight from court. It’s a first offence, and she so expected not to go to prison that she hadn’t arranged for anyone to pick her three kids up from school. She is in a state of absolute panic as she enters a Kafka-esque world where she’s allowed one phone call, but as they’ve taken her mobile away she doesn’t know any numbers. She has, to her mind, only committed the crime of ‘keeping my children warm’, but once in the system she makes one terrible decision after another.
Abi, meanwhile, is doing life for murder, but who she has murdered isn’t initially clear, and when it is, the question is, why? She is closed off, distant, possibly in a state of arrested grief. And then there is Kelsey, who is 19 and a heroin addict. She is nervy, immature, whiny, with the worst skin ever, and in Ramsey’s hands so phenomenally real it’s like she’s going to come out of the TV and be nervy, immature and whiny, with the worst skin ever, right beside you on the sofa. But she discovers she’s pregnant, which sets her on a new course.
Meanwhile, I should say that Siobhán Finneran (Happy Valley) plays the prison chaplain – empathetic and compassionate but knows that whatever she has in the faith cupboard will never be enough for what these women have endured.
There are no goodies or baddies. Prison warders can be harsh yet also kind. But prison is a place of chaos and violence – remember Seán Bean and the sugar water? – where you are most in danger from other prisoners. This is often nail-bitingly tense. It is also narratively propulsive. What crime has Kelsey actually committed? (You won’t discover that until episode three.) Why did Abi do what she did? Will Orla’s mother swear off the booze long enough to care safely for her grandchildren?
Overall you are forced to ask yourself: are these bad people or just regular people who’ve been forced into making poor choices due to the hands they’ve been dealt? I was absolutely down for it once I had the first episode under my belt and often moved to tears. Chances are that you will be too.
There have been seven series of the crime drama Shetland thus far, all starring Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Perez, but as I have never seen any of them I can’t say it’s not as good now he’s left. But OK, just to show willing: it’s not as good now he’s left. Obviously, I haven’t the faintest idea if it is or it isn’t, but I do know that I don’t wish to feel left out.
For the eighth series he has been replaced by DI Ruth Calder, played by Ashley Jensen. Calder is London-based but from Shetland originally and has to return as she’s on the trail of a vulnerable girl who has witnessed a gangland murder. She teams up with another detective, Tosh (Alison O’Donnell).
Even though it’s a race against time to save the girl it’s quite plodding, and I can’t say it’s especially suspenseful although, fair play, it is fun seeing Downton Abbey’s Phyllis Logan play the matriarch of a crime family while employing the F-word. (What would Mrs Hughes think? What would Carter say?) I know what I’m meant to care about. Why did Calder leave? Why is no one happy to see her back? What’s with the friends-with-benefits fella? But I don’t think I really do.
It may need time to bed in. Jensen is a lovely actress but thus far hasn’t been asked to do anything except be snippy. One thing I did learn is that Shetland is probably a place you want to avoid. Yes, it’s ravishingly beautiful, but it does seem to have an alarming homicide rate. I’ve always steered clear of Jersey (Bergerac) for that very reason too.
PHILIP NOLAN IS AWAY