Its two stars give exceptional performances as inmate and officer respectively, in a series about the inhumanity of the penal system which lays bare Jimmy McGovern’s genius
There is a moment near the start of Jimmy McGovern’s latest drama, Time (BBC One), that perfectly encapsulates his genius. Mark Cobden (Sean Bean) is arriving for processing at the prison in which he will serve his four-year sentence. Among the questions barked at him – name, age, is he on any medication – is one about his religion. Nervous and disoriented, he mumbles something about not really believing in God. “I’ll put you down as Anglican then,” comes the brisk reply (and standard joke, though not here played as one). “No, no,” Mark responds, kicked into focus. “More … more lapsed Catholic.”
It’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things – Time is a drama about the supposed strengths and many failures of the penal system and Mark’s religion affects his experiences inside not one iota. But it is the perfect demonstration and measure of McGovern’s two greatest strengths – his psychological acuity and his ability to evoke an entire interior world with one brief exchange. He knows a cradle Catholic, even in the most dire straits, would be recalled to himself under the threat of being demoted to Anglican. And he tells us something about the core of the man who is about to be tested as never before, as he enters a world of rules, regulations, petty bullying and sudden violence. It is a place of shifting alliances – a wing full of men who may be mad or bad but are almost always, directly or indirectly, dangerous to know.
