Hooked right from the start
WE all gasped in horror when Stephen Graham’s character had his throat slit in Line of Duty. But now the actor-of-the-moment is back on our screens.
Gritty, bleak and powerful, this four-part drama is exactly what you’d expect from Shane Meadows, best known for cult series This Is England.
Tackling themes of revenge and repressed memory, Graham is captivating on screen and should win a bunch of awards.
He plays Joseph, a painter-decorator and recovering alcoholic who is living in Sheffield.
In raw scenes, he visits his ex Debbie (Juliet Ellis) and his nine-year-old son Shea (Shea Michael-Shaw), who are now living with her new partner.
It becomes clear they are leaving for a new life in Australia. And there’s a heartfelt goodbye to his son as he tries to remain positive but viewers across the nation will shed a tear.
Grief etched all over his face, he heads straight to the nearest pub, where we witness his descent into a boozy, drug-fuelled night, that ends with some flashbacks to his childhood.
Waking up the next morning and suffering the hangover from hell, he makes a decision – with no family left to live for, he walks away from his life and heads for Ireland.
It’s a past that he has tried for decades to forget, but now he plans to confront those memories from a childhood spent in the care system.
This episode mostly sets up the ins and outs of Joseph’s life but leaves you wanting to know more about a past that will surely be just as wretched.