Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Sean Bean, Stephen Graham, James Nelson-Joyce, Hannah Walters, Dean Fagan, Jack McMullen, Paddy Rowan, Brian McCardie, Siobhan Finnernan, Cal MacAninch, Nadine Marshall, Kevin Harvey, David Calder, Sue Johnston, Franc Ashman, Nabil Elouahabi, Natalie Gavin, Aneurin Barnard, George Gjiggy Francis, Shaun Mason, Marie Critchley, Neal Caple, Bobby Schofield, Shahid Ahmed, Philip Barantini, Jonathan Harden, Terence Maynard, Jason Done, Lee Morris.
If there are any certainties in life, then the intoxicating writing and peerless observations of Jimmy McGovern are surely amongst the fail-safe confidences to which a television viewer can, and will, be taken down the avenues of the stark contrast, the depth of humanity, and the understanding of how life can change in a single instant.
Time is all a prisoner has, it is how they utilise the period behind bars, being kept away from society, that changes their perspective and sees how they reintegrate into society after they have completed their sentence; yet the public rarely wishes to understand the complexity of the life for those who are atoning for the crime they committed, or the pressures shovelled onto the shoulders of those whose duty it is to help them, keep an eye on them, to impose the law inside what can be a lawless place.
It is the burden of responsibility that brings Jimmy McGovern’s latest television masterpiece, Time, to the fore, and in particular the story of two men whose paths cross thanks to circumstance and decisions chosen, to the institution in which they both are to be seen as inhabiting.
You can never truly understand the life of a prisoner unless you have been one, nor can you truly find a way to empathise with the life of an officer unless you are part of the system or lived within the sometimes constraining atmosphere by being part of the family; and it is testament to Jimmy McGovern’s talent an questioning process, that characters such as the amiable, soft-hearted teacher with a problem with alcohol, Mark Cobden, played with unswerving dedication by Sean Bean, and the subject of inner mechanical pressure of Prison Officer Eric McNally, performed with sheer truth in every acting fibre by Stephen Graham, come respectfully off the page and punch the screen with honest reappraisal and suffering.
With incredible support from the likes of Sue Johnson, Bobby Schofield, Aneurin Barnard, Siobhan Finnernan and Terence Maynard, Time is the epitome of television drama, of what the genre is supposed to be, uncomfortable, searching for a truth, admitting that the system is flawed and at times broken, and uneasy watch, and yet conducted in such a fashion that it is riveting, powerful, and unequalled.
Jimmy McGovern is one of the nation’s top television dramatists, and Time, like Hillsborough and Cracker before it, is a prime example of how drama should be presented, one in which the truth is shown and discussed at length.
Ian D. Hall