Two fortysomething Glaswegians from either side of the tracks form an unlikely friendship in this comic melodrama
T
hey’re an unlikely duo. Jada is a petty criminal who lives hand to mouth in a cramped 60s tower block and can’t remember how many children he has. Dan is a TV producer with a Tesla outside his mansion and who – after five years of trying and six rounds of IVF – is about to meet his first child.
The pair encounter each other outside the sliding doors of Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University hospital, where Dan takes sips of cold air while he comes to terms with the wonder and terror of first-time parenthood and Jada sneaks a quick fag. Dan examines Jada’s vigilant eyes and seasonally inappropriate sportswear; Jada clocks Dan’s Rolex and works out how quickly he could take him in a fight. They bump into each other again in the lift a few days later, laying the seeds for a relationship that will reveal what divides them and what they share, building to a climax of kinship and betrayal.
Since leaving his job as an A&R manager in 2002, John Niven has written novels and screenplays that mix industry satire (pop, publishing, film) with sometimes eye-popping hedonism; presumably both will feature in his next project, a 2026 play about Blur and Oasis called The Battle. Yet while there’s a fair bit of hard living in The Fathers, Niven’s latest also shows his softer side, as the two fortysomething Glaswegian protagonists manage domesticity. Dan obsessively childproofs his house, buying expensive baby accessories and doing his best to be the perfect dad to Tom, while Jada tries to be more present with his girlfriend Nicola and new son Jayden than he has been for his other children – for which read “not very”.
