SARA WALLIS
10, must navigate his parents’ separation
BBC1, 9pm
THIS absorbing family drama centred around a little boy with autism returns for a third series.
Christopher Eccleston, Morven Christie and Lee Ingleby head up a fantastic ensemble cast as a family constantly trying to heal over the cracks.
It’s two years on and things have changed. Joe (Max Vento) is 10 and his mum and dad Alison and Paul (Christie and Ingleby) have now split up.
If divorce wasn’t hard enough to process for any child, Joe must cope with this seismic change through the filter of his autism. Worse still, his parents live 100 miles apart, so Joe spends his time shuttling backwards and forwards between his dad’s place in the Lakes and his mum’s new home in Manchester.
“Hug or handshake?” asks Alison as she leaves Joe, knowing she must do whatever he feels most comfortable with.
Then in more heartbreaking scenes, it is revealed that Paul has also moved from their old home, with Joe later going back inside and lying down on his bedroom floor. Except that it is not his bedroom anymore.
With plenty of confusion and sadness, it falls to the character of Joe’s grandad Maurice (Eccleston) to provide comic relief.
Since retiring he has become a volunteer firefighter, something which he relishes as a manly activity. But there are stern words from the doctor after he’s subjected to a medical.
Elsewhere, watch out for new faces this time. Julie Hesmondhalgh plays Joe’s schoolteacher Heather, while David Gyasi is school dad Ben who manages to get on the wrong side of Alison.