For a quarter of a century, Anne Williams fought the official narrative about the Hillsborough disaster that took her 15-year-old son. This painful, tender drama shows her fight
‘I lost my boy. Kevin Williams. I’m his mum. Anne.” Episode one of Anne, ITV’s measured bio-drama about the Hillsborough campaigner Anne Williams, ends with a small moment that carries the most profound significance.
For an hour we’ve watched Williams (Maxine Peake), whose 15-year-old son Kevin was one of the 97 Liverpool fans killed by a terrace crush at the FA Cup semi-final in Sheffield on 15 April 1989, being battered and swayed by the loss of her child and the agony of not knowing exactly how and why Kevin died. At times she has hidden, sitting smoking late into the night or spending hopeless mornings in bed. But not now. Now, at her first meeting of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, she has stood up to say Kevin’s name and her own out loud. A life’s mission has begun.