BBC1’s Time isn’t subtle – but it’s still riveting
From our UK edition
Jimmy McGovern is a writer whose sleeve is rarely heart-free. Since cutting his teeth on Brookside in the early 1980s, he’s served up one crunching drama after another (Priest, Hillsborough, Broken etc. etc.), all of them characterised by a mix of dark personal stories and even darker social issues conveyed in a way that leaves us in little doubt about how we should respond. Granted, there are some concessions to light and shade – but if there’s such a thing as unsubtle nuance, then McGovern has mastered it. Even so, Time may be the most crunching of the lot. The first series of this anthology show took place in a men’s prison and spared us none of the violence, mental illness and institutional failures involved. The second, set in a women’s prison, didn’t either.
