Watch TV with Paul Flynn
Director Shane Meadows is one of our few remaining kitchen-sink dramatists. The Virtues is his first work for Channel 4 since the brilliant This Is England. It sees him reunited with Combo himself, Stephen Graham, the scorching Scouse actor who’s just captivated us with his scene-stealing performance in Line Of Duty. Together, they have a touch of the British Scorsese and De Niro about them, if only they’d met in a Midlands job centre. Together, they are the most useful reminder that the ordinary folk so often hold the keys to extraordinary tales. Together, they are possessed of hard, truthful magic.
Our story begins in Sheffield, where Joseph (Graham), a jaded builder, visits his ex-wife to reconcile himself to her taking their son to Australia for a new life. He bids them a bittersweet farewell. Just as you think everyone has acted with unusual, if stunted, dignity in the face of forthcoming separation anxiety, the wheels come off. Joseph begins a biblical personal pilgrimage into his troubled past, pockmarked by institutional religious manhandling.
His journey starts in the pub. In a one-camera scene lasting a full 12 minutes, filmed in a decrepit boozer with the locals, Meadows and his star take you viscerally into the escapism of a man staring existential nothingness in the face. Joseph knows only how to drink and sniff his way out of it. It is one of the most audacious benders I’ve ever seen on TV, precise tensions rising with each round ordered. This isn’t an impromptu midweek piss-up. It’s an exorcism. Graham will win all the awards for it, because his feeling and touch for the thinly disguised pain of Everyman is peerless.
The story develops into a travelogue to Ireland, where Joseph’s long-lost sister and her family will eventually appear. Little motifs of Christianity reinforce the drama’s thrilling exploration of redemption and retribution. An undercurrent of violence that is all the more terrifying for its suggestive nature percolates through everything.
Meadows and Graham know the exact interface of toughness and tenderness, when to hold back, when to let it explode. Everything about The Virtues speaks of its quality. British storytelling at its finest. Begins Wednesday, Channel 4, 9pm