Reviews

Plot: Vile criminal Sean and his suffering family become centre stage. Yvonne can't bring herself to leave him. Her mother and sisters have other ideas. This has been great. BBC drama is doing really well unlike their sitcoms. This drama was promoted as being gritty and real and hasn't failed to deliver all its punches. There's been questions over casting and whether Jimmy Mccgovern has written characters or cyphers around whom the action is written. McGovern is known for his providing a psychology to his characters as they face real life and how they must deal with challenging circumstances. I'm happy with the characters and how they are written. Timothy Spall is always good and is at home here in this drama despite being better known as a comedy actor. One of the weaker subplots was teacher Brian Peterson (Neil Dudgeon) who got accused of being a flasher, after being desperate to urinate whilst jogging in the park and being spotted by a young girl. This issue has been covered repeatedly in popular soap opera here and McGovern did not add anything to a dead horse that has been well flogged.