MISERY BUSINESS

Jimmy McGovern’s ‘Unforgivable’ is a sympathetic, if rather rushed, story about the impact of abuse, writes Nick Hilton. And Sean O’Grady says ‘The Assassin’ works... very nearly

- By Nick Hilton and Sean O'Grady

Liverpool-born TV luminary Jimmy McGovern first rose to prominence – after a stint on soaps like Brookside and Corrie – with Cracker, a detective series starring Robbie Coltrane as a misanthropic criminal psychologist.

Since then, he has become the great chronicler of Britain’s ills. From the Hillsborough disaster to the Iraq war, via inquisitions on joint enterprise, unemployment and disability cuts, he has run the gamut of social failings. And a recurring theme, running from 1994’s Priest to 2017’s Broken, is the legacy of child abuse, a subject he explores in profound detail, again, in BBC Two’s Unforgivable.

Joe Mitchell (Bobby Schofield) is in prison, having been found guilty of sexually assaulting his 12-year-old nephew, Tom (Austin Haynes). Tom’s mother, Anna (Anna Friel), struggles with Tom’s increasingly erratic behaviour, while grieving for her and Joe’s mother, who has just died. When Joe is released from prison, he is offered a second chance by a group of Christians, led by Katherine (Anna Maxwell Martin), who believe in rehabilitation and offer Joe a chance to, if not start again, resume some sort of quotidian existence. “Isn’t forgiveness selfish?” she asks Joe, as they explore how he can rejoin society. But Joe isn’t really looking for absolution; he’s looking for answers. And here, the long, multi-generational shadow of abuse casts its shade.