Broken
BBC ONE, 9.00PM
This Jimmy Mcgovern’s latest six-part drama is a howl of frustration on behalf of those families – plenty of them hard-working – who find themselves in desperate cycles of debt. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t skint,” says single mother Christina (Anna Friel). The focal points of the drama are Christina and Sean Bean’s gentle yet troubled Father Michael Kerrigan: two people trying their best in nearimpossible circumstances. Their paths cross when Christina’s attendance at Father Michael’s church for her daughter’s Holy Communion leads indirectly to getting sacked from her job. When her life begins to spiral out of control, she turns to the priest for help.
Broken is an unsentimental appraisal of working-class culture and community in the North – celebrating its importance and recognising its limitations in a society where the state’s safety net is fraying badly. In Friel and Bean, it has two actors in new chapters in their careers, while Mcgovern is at something close to his best, making his points without hammering you over the head, and leavening the growing tragedy with well-judged humour. Broken is also, sadly, a drama for our times. Gabriel Tate