The riveting spectacle of justice being done
It’s been a long, hard journey towards justice in Little Boy Blue (ITV), but the end is in sight. This sombre yet hypnotic factual drama about Liverpool schoolboy Rhys Jones’s death a decade ago reached its penultimate episode with charges finally brought against the innocent 11-year-old’s killer – aged only 16 himself. What a senseless waste of two young lives.
This is a tragic true-life case of which we already know the outcome, of course, but writer Jeff Pope skilfully ratcheted up the tension nonetheless. Everyone knew the shooter was local gang member Sean Mercer (Paddy Rowan). The challenge was getting enough evidence to prove it – a nigh-on impossible task when police were faced with a parade of crophaired youths, blankly saying “No comment” and displaying a disturbing lack of remorse.
I willed witnesses not to be intimidated into changing their statements. I breathed a sigh of relief when, despite their initial findings, ballistic experts confirmed that the revolver found last week was the murder weapon after all. I cheered when James Yates (James Nelsonjoyce), who supplied Mercer with the gun, finally broke rank to testify – out of not guilt but terror about what
happens to “baby killers” in prison.
Sinead Keenan and Brían F O’byrne were gut-wrenchingly understated as Rhys’s devastated parents Steve and Melanie Jones. Cracks widened in their marriage as they grieved in different ways. While she sat shellshocked in Rhys’s untouched bedroom, he threw himself into DIY chores and returned to work. Both wept when the other wasn’t watching.
The splendid Stephen Graham, all raw emotion and barely concealed rage as Det Supt Dave “Ned” Kelly, recalled his turn as Al Capone in period gangster epic Boardwalk Empire. He prowled the police station with a baseball bat, twitchy with frustration at the investigation’s repeated setbacks. As he said, with simmering fury: “A lovely mum and dad, hard-working, a good home, a beautiful little boy – just snuffed out. And for what? F--- all.”
In the final frame, Kelly bullishly refused to cut a deal with Yates. The steadfast cop was determined to punish both the perpetrators and those who helped them hide in plain sight – not just for Rhys’s family but the whole city of Liverpool, suffering a wave of gang violence but shamed into silence by the stigma attached to being “a grass”. It was a complex
Loaded (Channel 4) began with the sort of thing many of us dream about: a man repeatedly checking his bank balance only for it to suddenly shoot up from £791 overdrawn to £14.5million in credit. But this comedy-drama takes an oh-so-modern approach to the get-rich-quick idea, following four mates who sell their smartphone app – an Angry Birds-alike game called Cat Factory – for $300m.
They splashed their newfound cash on red Ferraris, £7m semi-circular mansions and several hundred pairs of Birkenstock sandals – before getting sued by their former drug dealer for stealing the hit game’s concept from his tattoo of a cat. Just a normal day at the office, then.
The set-up recalled a Brit version of HBO’S start-up satire Silicon Valley, which airs here on Sky Atlantic. Indeed, there was an eerily similar scene here to Silicon Valley’s debut episode, with the anxious nerd-inchief throwing up when he realised how rich he was.
To its detriment, though, this was brasher and more blokey. Silicon Valley is staffed by lovable underdogs but Loaded’s leading quartet were mostly irritating, with the exception of frazzled genius Watto (scene-stealer Nick Helm). It’s hard to warm to joyless control freaks who stalk their ex-girlfriends, let alone cocky spendthrifts who go clubbing in Viking helmets. This lack of likeable characters – the women were especially one-dimensional – meant there was nobody to really root for.
The dialogue was overwritten by Fresh Meat alumnus Jon Brown, straining too hard for laughs. Rather than simply drinking coffee, people “communed with the mighty java bean”. They didn’t bring bad news, they were “bearers of bad juju”.
Still, “millionaire’s guilt” and the divisive nature of money should prove fertile themes. Loaded had promise and fizz (literally – they filled a bath with Dom Perignon). But it needs the confidence to calm down.
Little Boy Blue Loaded ★★★