What I do remember is the sheer pleasure I felt when, unaided, he wrote his first letter. Oddly enough, I can’t clearly recall how I taught him. It took about nine months (largely because I would go missing from the wing when I had spells in Punishment Block, now known as the Care and Separation Unit). And, just as Mark says to his visitor, I asked George if he wanted to learn? He said yes. I told him the contents were safe with me, but he may not be so lucky next time. The letter from his wife was quite personal.
Some staff thought it amusing to call out “Let’s have the dummies.” Hardly an encouragement. Twice a week, some lads would be called out of the workshops to attend remedial classes. I knew that then, as now, illiteracy was an issue. He asked if I would write a reply, so he could copy it. A lad (let’s call him George) came to my cell with a letter his wife had written him. One poignant scene took me back to a rare uplifting experience I had in prison. Now, it is as common as the drug-taking and everyday violence.Īlso a man trapped. In my day, this happened often in women’s jails but rarely within the male population. Sharing a cell, designed in Victorian times to hold one prisoner, he sees his cell mate “cutting up” or self-harming. McGovern creates scene after scene showing a system in meltdown. Within minutes of his arrival he witnesses a violent assault the days that follow do so in suit. The madness doesn’t stop at the prison gate the journey sets the tone for the constant mayhem that awaits him inside. It is his first conviction and a universe away from the life he left behind. Mark, a teacher on the out, is doing a four stretch. A decent society would not transport a dog in this fashion – and yet this scene plays out every day after court. His fellow travellers scream constant obscenities at each other, the guards and the world in general. Instead, he slamdunks the viewer, along with the main character, Mark (played by Sean Bean), into a “sweatbox”: the cell-like vehicle used to transport prisoners from court to jail. Time does not disappoint: as usual, McGovern does not let his audience slip gently into the chaos. McGovern has serious form for pointing out the establishment’s often cruel and unjust way of doing things.
McGovern has serious form for pointing out the establishment’s often cruel, unjust way of doing things. After a long barren period, there is a new name to add to the list: Time, the three-part prison drama written by Jimmy McGovern for the BBC. All of these had the power to transport me back to the wings.
Time sean bean series#
There are notable exceptions: the book A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle, Rex Bloomstein’s fly-on-the-wall TV series on HMP Strangeways and GF Newman’s TV drama Law and Order, which included A Prisoner’s Tale. It seems he couldn’t be worse equipped for life inside, where sugar and boiling water aren’t just component parts for a nice cup of tea (you may want to avert your eyes during the most viscerally unpleasant scene involving a kettle since Line of Duty’s rogue prison guards roughed up Lindsay Denton), officers burst into cells wearing riot gear, and most of the inmates should, as one character points out, be in psychiatric care, not jail.The vast majority of “real-life” accounts have made me switch off pretty quickly. They want to find out the length of his sentence, how much time he’s doing - and in discovering that, to get the measure of what kind of man he is, whether he is a threat, an ally, or someone to push around.Ī former teacher consumed by guilt over his crime, Mark (a melancholy Sean Bean) falls into that latter category (“Do one, granddad,” one prisoner hisses back when Mark tries to remonstrate with him like he’s negotiating with a Year Nine who hasn’t done their homework). His fellow inmates aren’t asking him what he’s up to (it’s not like there’s much to do, anyway). Hen Mark Cobden enters prison in the first moments of Jimmy McGovern’s new drama, he soon learns that the question “What are you doing?” has another meaning. New West End Company BRANDPOST | PAID CONTENT.
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