Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
Cast: Nina Sosanya, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Laura Checkley, Faraz Ayub, Stephen Wright, Ron Donachie, Jake Davies, Ben Tavassoli, Nicholas Lumley, Jordan Myrie, Chicho Tche, James Foster, Karen Gill, Bill Blackwood, Mark Newsome, Jack Bardoe, Nathan Vaughn Harris, Riley Carter Millington, Marianne McIvor, Mark Arden, Lawrence Walker, Matthew Stirling, Simon Donaldson, Alistair Lock, Yusef Chaudhri, Jaden Baker, Denzil Baidoo, Stephen Clyde, Jordan Howat, Sagar Arya, Christopher Fulford.
Prison drama has always been popular, whether it is because of the fascination of life behind bars, or out of some sense of morbid outrage which asks of the viewer to witness via television just exactly how their taxes are being spent on those to whom society has decided needs removing from their sight.
It could be hoped that in an more enlightened age we see prison as reform, rehabilitation, a place where justice is not dispensed at the whim of a populace baying for blood, where the national press are not the ones bringing the gavel down and sentences are proportionate with the crime committed; and yet the population of prison is rising, the sense of criminality and procedure has altered, and television has made the experience seem glamorous, that it is a game highlighted by a case of them and us, convict v Screw.
Coming on the back of Jimmy McGovern’s Time, which starred Sean Bean and Stephen Graham, Rob Williams, who previously created the superbly written and observed drama The Victim, brings his view of prison life through the eyes of officers and inmates at Long Marsh Prison to the fore, and like Time, this six-part series is not one that seeks to exaggerate the institution, it is not one to show the heroism of an officer insistent of change, but one that is a truth of life inside, of how the officers are as much behind bars as the ones in their charge, and whilst it doesn’t delve into how the institution affects those on the outside, the husbands, the wives, the children of the officer, and what they have to deal with when the drama comes home, it is a serial which confirms just what is at stake when the system fails.
With a new recruit unknowingly threatening the balance between those on the inside and the ones in uniform, a host of lies and secrets ready to be released from their captivity, Screw, the demonstrably ugly word that is pervasive in society even amongst those that have never seen the inside of a jail cell, the drama is one that frames the everyday, the goodwill always locking horns with what is in effect a microcosm of society reduced to the persistent and the omnipresent feature, that of no trust, of dealing with a potential powder keg inflamed by the bored and the habitual.
Place into this the institutional nightmare that Ms. Leigh Henry, portrayed by the versatile and sublime Nina Sosanya, is living through as her life starts to unravel as she deals with the responsibility of command and her own life confidences, Screw is to be seen as one of the great British prison dramas to have found a place on television, and with presence of actors excelling in their storyline and intermingled relationships, such as Stephen Wright, Jamie Lee O’ Donnell, Laura Checkley, Jake Davies, and Bill Blackwood, what the viewer witnesses is the damage done, the chance of redemption never truly becoming attainable.
A fantastic piece of television, Screw deserves a second series without exception.
Ian D. Hall