This rich, subtle and sophisticated look at child sexual abuse features a stellar cast putting in faultless performances. Its lack of easy answers feels exactly right
“W
e pray for it every day, but it’s man’s will that gets done, not God’s.” Thus speaks a former nun, pretty much an emblematic character of a Jimmy McGovern drama, delivering an emblematic line. McGovern has always been a chronicler of pressing social issues, from police incompetence and corruption (Hillsborough) to government failures and cover-ups (Sunday, Reg), class struggle (Dockers), disability (Go Now), religious hypocrisy (Priest, Broken), violence (Anthony, Time) and the brokenness of systems supposedly set up to help our most vulnerable (Care).
But whatever the issue under examination and – usually – excoriation, there is the profounder concern of how far from grace we have fallen. From there, McGovern asks: what would it take for us to rise again?
His latest creation, Unforgivable, takes child sexual abuse as its subject. McGovern has brought together trusted members of, in effect, the repertory company he has gathered over the years – including Annas Friel and Maxwell Martin – to tell the story of an ordinary family trying to cope with the aftermath of a terrible act; the abuse of a young teenager, Tom (Austin Haynes), by his uncle Joe (Bobby Schofield, playing the character as unmonstrously as he is written, making his actions and the ramifications all the more awful for it).
