In The Name of The Father (1993) 10.05pm, Friday, RTÉ 2

“I’m a free man and I’m going out the front door!”

Jim Sheridan’s award-winning drama about Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) and the Guildford Four case still packs a punch, thanks to the powerful performances and the emphasis that Terry George’s screenplay places on the personal relationships a ected by this infamous miscarriage of justice. Chief among these is Conlon’s relationship with his sickly father, Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite), who travelled all the way to London from Belfast on behalf of his son, only to be arrested, imprisoned and tragically, to die while still incarcerated. It is these scenes between father and son which lie at the very heart of the lm: the scene at the Belfast docks when Gerry cannot tell his father how he feels about leaving him; a poignant scene where a dying Giuseppe asks his son to hold his hand; and, most strongly, when Gerry meets Giuseppe for the rst time after his interrogation and the shock of the experience leads him to dredge up all his childhood resentment towards a deeply religious man who has lived his life by a strict moral code.

In the main role, Daniel Day-Lewis is thoroughly convincing, right down to the accent which locals say is within a street or two of perfection. Watching Day-Lewis in the dock at the very end, where he exhibits a combination of seething rage at the injustice of it all, and relief at his liberation, is worth the price of admission alone. His performance is matched by that of Postlethwaite, while other notable performances come from Emma Thompson who, as campaigning solicitor Garth Pierce, does her tight-lipped Portia routine to perfection; and Don Baker, who chills as IRA head honcho, ‘Joe I know where you live’ McAndrew.