TIME
The Cracker creator’s new prison drama teams up two acting titans
Jimmy Mcgovern has always been intrigued by prisons. “I’ve been to quite a few prisons in my life. I used to go a fair bit.” He pauses to clarify. “Although only as a visitor.” As a prolific writer of many acclaimed TV crime dramas, from Cracker to Accused, it’s been a key source of inspiration for decades; in his new BBC miniseries Time, it takes centre-stage.
The three-part drama tracks two perspectives via two British acting powerhouses: a prisoner, played by Sean Bean, and a prison officer, played by Stephen Graham. Bean’s character, a school teacher, “has been sentenced to four years because he drove a car when he was pissed,” Mcgovern explains, “and killed a cyclist.” Graham’s character, meanwhile, is a “typical firm-but-fair prison officer. He’s a good one, and there are many good prison officers in British prisons. There are some shits, as well. But he’s a good one.”
As part of his research, Mcgovern visited several prisons, including HMP Erlestoke; he also became a regular subscriber to Inside Time, the prison newspaper. The system, he says, has changed since he first visited in the ’80s. “They’ve lost an awful lot of experienced officers. It’s an appalling mess we make of it, compared to other countries.”
Mcgovern’s position, and the show’s, is clear: prisons are in desperate need of reform. Time covers the entirety of the incarceration of Bean’s character, and by the end of it, he has “nothing to thank the prison for,” Mcgovern says. “He’s never forgiven. But towards the end of the drama, he becomes worthy of forgiveness. What changes him is time.” There’s more to that title than just prison slang.
TIME AIRS ON BBC ONE LATER THIS YEAR