Who'd be a priest then? Even the most devout one I think would probably not want to fill Sean Bean's character's shoes in this 6-part Jimmy McGovern BBC drama set in Sheffield. In short order he has to contend with a poverty-stricken single mother concealing the death-by-natural-causes of her mother in her own house, the death at the hands of a police marksman of a mentally disturbed young West Indian man contentiously allowed back into the community at the boy's mother's house, a suicidal middle-aged mother of three who's embezzled from her employer to feed her gaming machine habit and a dispute between a devoutly Christian, heterosexual, black Caribbean man and a hermetic, homosexual man.
Plus, priest Bean has his own problems. It wouldn't be a drama about the clergy of course without child sexual abuse and so Bean is tortured by memories of his own childhood and assault by a predatory priest at a young age, plus he has an elderly bed-ridden mother whom he and his sister take turns to sit with through the night. It seems that he can't get through the regular service of the sacrament without having a tortuous flashback about his youthful agonies which later turned him into a hard-drinking, womanising young man before his conscience drove him to the priesthood.
His interaction and, crucially as regards the police killing of the young boy, inaction links all six episodes, testing to the limit his own faith and vocation as he struggles to stay impartial and true to the doctrine of his church. His safety valves are his regular conflabs with a senior colleague played by Adrian Dunbar and his socialising with three old chums invariably down the pub, but the death of his mother in the last episode heightens his torment and leads up to the climactic scenes where we learn whether this ostensibly good man is broken or not by all that happens on his watch.
As you can imagine it's not laugh-a-minute stuff and the unremitting heaviness of the depicted events can seem overbearing at times. Not all the stories work well, especially the argument between the unforgiving older son of the mother of the police victim and her well-meaning gay neighbour, but in the two main stories of the suicide and the attempted police cover-up over the shooting of the boy, the writing is taut and credible. One might argue that the uplifting ending goes against the prevalent mood of unremitting bleakness in the community portrayed over the six episodes, but if any man deserved a break, it's Bean's hard-pressed priest.
Bean is excellent in the main role, cast against type while there is strong support from Paula Malcolmson as the suicidal woman, Mark Stanley as the conscience-stricken policeman and Muna Otara as the dead boy's mother. Even Anna Friel impresses as the down-pressed mother in the introductory episode, reduced to fraudulently encashing her newly deceased mum's pension to avoid the breadline. I've no religious faith of my own so the constant reiteration of the sacramental service seemed a bit overdone to me and like I said, if it wasn't for bad luck poor Bean would have no luck at all, but in the main, this was a rewarding if sometimes gruelling watch I was glad not only to have watched but to have got through to the end.
Plus, priest Bean has his own problems. It wouldn't be a drama about the clergy of course without child sexual abuse and so Bean is tortured by memories of his own childhood and assault by a predatory priest at a young age, plus he has an elderly bed-ridden mother whom he and his sister take turns to sit with through the night. It seems that he can't get through the regular service of the sacrament without having a tortuous flashback about his youthful agonies which later turned him into a hard-drinking, womanising young man before his conscience drove him to the priesthood.
His interaction and, crucially as regards the police killing of the young boy, inaction links all six episodes, testing to the limit his own faith and vocation as he struggles to stay impartial and true to the doctrine of his church. His safety valves are his regular conflabs with a senior colleague played by Adrian Dunbar and his socialising with three old chums invariably down the pub, but the death of his mother in the last episode heightens his torment and leads up to the climactic scenes where we learn whether this ostensibly good man is broken or not by all that happens on his watch.
As you can imagine it's not laugh-a-minute stuff and the unremitting heaviness of the depicted events can seem overbearing at times. Not all the stories work well, especially the argument between the unforgiving older son of the mother of the police victim and her well-meaning gay neighbour, but in the two main stories of the suicide and the attempted police cover-up over the shooting of the boy, the writing is taut and credible. One might argue that the uplifting ending goes against the prevalent mood of unremitting bleakness in the community portrayed over the six episodes, but if any man deserved a break, it's Bean's hard-pressed priest.
Bean is excellent in the main role, cast against type while there is strong support from Paula Malcolmson as the suicidal woman, Mark Stanley as the conscience-stricken policeman and Muna Otara as the dead boy's mother. Even Anna Friel impresses as the down-pressed mother in the introductory episode, reduced to fraudulently encashing her newly deceased mum's pension to avoid the breadline. I've no religious faith of my own so the constant reiteration of the sacramental service seemed a bit overdone to me and like I said, if it wasn't for bad luck poor Bean would have no luck at all, but in the main, this was a rewarding if sometimes gruelling watch I was glad not only to have watched but to have got through to the end.