From Time to Screw to Scum and now Black Bird, can drama ever capture the brutal reality of life inside? A former inmate reveals how they stack up against his own spells in the slammer
In prison, you have plenty of time to weigh up what’s truth and what’s bullshit. So whenever I watch a drama about crime and punishment, particularly one set in a jail, my first test is how quickly it takes me back to my spells in UK slammers.
The great prison dramas I’ve seen, from Jimmy McGovern’s Time to the new Taron Egerton show Black Bird, instantly give me a feeling of being inside again, as much for the sense of tedium as for the violence and mayhem that sporadically breaks the waste of everybody’s time. Channel 4’s recent Screw showed the mental health crisis and drug abuse afflicting prisons today. At one point, two characters discuss how the bulk of drugs get inside the prison walls. The verdict? “Officers. Not everyone in charge keeps on the straight and narrow.”
