Moving climax to a powerful docudrama
Television
The Moorside, ep 2
BBC One
‘Ciggie, brew, bacon butty, then we’ll see.” Sheridan Smith’s closing words as Julie Bushby indicated a future bursting with possibility or, more likely, light on enticing options. Either way, being featured in a two-part BBC One docudrama was probably not on her agenda, but The Moorside has done full justice to her story – and that of schoolgirl Shannon Matthews, who went missing for 24 days in 2008.
Smith has taken the plaudits for her performance as Bushby, and last night was even more fiercely convincing, as the extent of the deceptions and inadequacies of her neighbour, Shannon’s mother Karen Matthews (Gemma Whelan), dawned. Sian Brooke was every bit her equal as Natalie Brown, another neighbour, who tried to verbally bludgeon the truth out of Matthews, while Bushby soothed and pleaded.
Whelan, meanwhile, made an extraordinary Karen, wheedling, sobbing, moaning and doing everything possible to shirk responsibility for her role in Shannon’s abduction. Finally, trapped in the passenger seat of a car while Bushby and Brown sat in the back, sparing her the shame of having to look them in the eye, she confessed. She claimed, pretty convincingly, that the plot had not been a calculated bid for reward money but a bungled attempt to get herself and her children away from her partner Craig.
Afterwards, of course, Matthews resumed the litany of obfuscation and half-truths that made it impossible for the police to confirm their suspicions of third-party involvement. And yet Matthews remained a pitiable figure, rather than a malevolent one. Most of this was down to Whelan’s brilliant performance, but Smith as Bushby underlined it in the dock, delivering a statement intended to give “the whole truth”.
“Karen is damaged. She’s been used and abused since childhood… She doesn’t understand that sex isn’t the same thing as love and affection… I will not join in with the lynch mob… I’m standing by her now. She’s still my friend.”
This was doubtless more than Matthews deserved, but also a tribute to Bushby’s remarkable courage and forbearance. Otherwise, the temptation to mount the soapbox was thankfully resisted; instead, it was the intimate exchanges that really hit home, most notably when Bushby and Brown revealed their histories of sexual abuse to each other, almost by accident.
Karen Matthews was a wretch, certainly, but no less a victim.