Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: David Morrisey, Lorraine Ashbourne, Monica Dolan, Robert Lindsey, Michael Balogun, Philip Jackson, Perry Jackson, Lesley Manville, Stephen Dillane, Christine Bottomley, Adam Hugill. Bill Jones, Robert Emms, Aisling Loftus, Jordan Myrie, Ria Zmitrowicw, Bethany Asher, Oliver Huntingdon, Conor Deane, David Harewood, Sharlene Whyte, Jennifer Hennessy, Charles Dale, Tyrese Eaton-Dyce.
Some wounds run too deep to allow them time to heal in just a generation, the anguish, the sense of betrayal, the sense of unfaithfulness in the family, in the community is a powerful reminder of hate that creeps into the blood when loyalties and ideologies force themselves into that which once bound all.
Almost every area has such a flashpoint moment, the instant in which you can see through historical evidence that the crack of displacement in society is too great to solve without the worst kind of recriminations is the instant that you can see why true wounds, the scars that fester and never close, will always surface, often with terrible results and fallout.
The first series of Sherwood delved deeply into the fractures still evident from the battle between the NUM and the miners in Nottinghamshir who didn’t want to strike, and the rights and wrongs of the situation that has never been resolved, the sadness, the constant war that has seen families torn apart and friendships, forged in times of desperation, ripped apart…ruptured by political interference and manipulation.
Perhaps surprisingly the need for a second series was a consideration and one that was fulfilled, one that instead of returning memories of the closure of the coal mines and the war between miners, sees the storyline placed under the microscope of how the future is on a precipice for the local community as they become influenced by the arrival of the scourge of modern times, lost hope coupled with drug addiction.
There is a powerful sense of disjointedness as two families are pushed together in conflict and the unimaginable destruction that flows is carefully juxtapositioned by the evil that stalks the streets and the memory that lingers of the subterfuge caused and spread by the Thatcher Government of the time.
This contrast is framed exceedingly well between the characters of David Morrisey’s DCS Ian St. Clair, Lorraine Ashbourne’s Daphne Sparrow, Monica Dolan’s Ann Branson, and the ever impressive Robert Lindsay as the mysterious Franklin Warner; in this dynamic the war is shown to be never over, the pain and the hurt too deep to forgive; and in one outstanding scene over the six episodes the chance, the opportunity for redemption is cruelly snatched away by regulation and the letter of the law. It is a moment that sees a further split in the future, the damnation of effect in Sherwood’s green and distempered landscape.
A continuation of a story that was arguably unexpected, but entirely welcome. Sherwood is the proof that all is not well in our fractured land.
Ian D. Hall