Tears, forgiveness and the misery of loving a jailbird

Wicked George Warleggan is more diabolical than ever now that he’s a magistrate. in Poldark, he was sentencing hunger- crazed villagers to a lifetime’s transportation to the Antipodes, merely for stealing a handful of grain. That Georgie, he’s so mean.

Perhaps the cruellest aspect of transportation was the certainty that prisoners would never see their loved ones again. And as Life Behind Bars: Visiting Hour (c4) showed, it’s that scrap of contact with the outside world that keeps hope and sanity alive.

This was such an obvious idea for a fly-on-the-wall documentary, it’s remarkable no one has done it before. We sat in on a single session, as four very different cons were briefly reunited with their families in the visiting room at HMP Low Moss in Scotland.

Two were much what you’d expect jailbirds to be — one a violent drunk, the other an old lag who remembered Strangeways in the eighties, ‘ when jails were jails’.

But the other duo were intriguing characters, and it was fascinating to eavesdrop on their conversations for an hour.

Gary was a murderer and a charmer. As a teenager, almost 20 years ago, he killed a man in a fight and, though he was later released on licence, he’s back inside after reoffending.

exactly what he did this time, we weren’t told, but it’s clear that the parole board are in no hurry to let him out again.

While he was a free man, Gary met a girl who adores him, charley, and started a family. She sat across the table from him, her eyes wet with tears, and tried to plan their wedding outside.

However miserable he is behind bars, she is being punished more — trying to raise their children, while counting the minutes till she sees him again.

it wasn’t hard to see why charley was besotted: he made her laugh constantly. And he’ll never find another girl like her. if Gary has any sense at all, he’ll beg the prison governor to let him marry his bride in the prison chapel.

Retired clergyman John, 81, and his son Mike — serving 14 years for attempting to murder his wife — shared a relationship no less unusual. John was an innocent, a staunch christian who believed ‘adultery is an appalling sin’. Mike had led an extraordinary secret life, including children with another woman. His father could barely begin to comprehend the enormity of it.

But Mike was determined to obtain his old dad’s forgiveness and, in the course of a visit during which he quoted the Bible shamelessly, he got it. How sincere his repentence was, we were left to decide for ourselves. Hospital (BBc2) also leaves us to make up our own minds, though this is often because we see only snapshots, without much explanation.

This episode focused on mental health cases at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, and we met 85-year-old Stan who had a colourful new hobby — he went for semi-naked jaunts on his electric scooter and, when it ran out of juice, had to be rescued by ambulance.

We could only guess at Stan’s home life: we heard from two of his children and glimpsed an exwife, but there was little detail.

The one story presented properly followed former bus driver carl, 75, a cricket lover whose dementia took a turn for the worse after his devoted wife and carer Patricia left for a short break with family in Barbados.

There was little that medicine could do to help. This was a poignant interlude in a disjointed programme.