Broken

Broken was a gutsy series. It dramatised big themes—conscience, guilt, shame—and, with powerful writing and performances, told big stories about the Church, poverty and abuse. It's made for bitter viewing at times but even at its toughest, there's been a lit candle glowing determinedly at its centre.

Amen, Father Michael, you wonderful priest. And amen, Sean Bean, you wonderful actor.

I recorded this and forgot it for a few months. To be honest I was not expecting much. I recorded it because I find Anna Freil beautiful and she gets better with age. Having been born in a mining town and lived in the North of England all my life I always admire British dramas that 'tell it like it is'. What we have in the UK now is two separate countries and I have lived in both. One is the affluent UK where nobody dares to stray north and lives in a recession free capsule calling the working class lazy and continue to make use of cheap foreign labour to get their cars cleaned and their nails manicured. Then the other UK is what you see in this series. A UK where surviving is a battle as the state keep introducing penalties to drive you deeper into debt and to live on charity. A UK full of loan sharks, predators and pay day loan companies that are allowed to charge eye watering rates of interest. In one generation 'Nu Labour' & the tories have deskilled the British workforce and made us totally reliant on foreign labour. This series perfectly encapsulates both the physical and mental battles that challenge those at the bottom. The frightening thing is now the disabled, mentally ill and other needy sections of society are now being targeted and still the middle classes cheer on this destruction. I worked overseas for many years and did not recognise the place of my birth on my return. Sean Bean has always played good roles and should have had a lot more opportunities in film and TV. His portrayal of a man racked with guilt and shame perfectly reflects what a friend of mine went through when they were abused. There are beacons of hope throughout the series and allude to a once great community spirit where everybody once looked out for each other and helped each other, but as the series demonstrates these are now just glimpses in an industrial wasteland deliberately destroyed in the 80's. This kind of drama is what the UK does best and sits nicely with the likes of Boys from the Blackstuff, Kes & I, Daniel Blake.

This is not a perfect series; it all adds up in the end, but each episode is devoted to a different character and plot line, and some of those slip in to following episodes. The playing of the priest by Sean Bean is as natural a performance that you will see anywhere. Bean plays a maverick of a priest with unconventional approaches and attitudes to religion and a very chatty way of delivering the sermon and the mass. This is a priest, though, with a past; a past of the ordinary red blooded male who becomes a priest after he has sewn his wild oats and he questions the faith and whether he is fit enough to even be a priest. His demons attack him every time he performs the Eucharist - if perform is the right word - and images from his past flood through his mind every time he takes the piece of bread before he turns it into Christ. The first episode tells you what the whole series is about when a character is found 'borrowing money' from the till of her employer just to feed her kids. Then we have a scene at the Social Security office, after she is fired, which we have seen in films by Ken Loach and Tony Garnet but we go a little further in this story. The performances are generally excellent and played for realism but everything seemed to be blamed on the southerners. Apart from a black family from the West Indies all the cast were 'northerners' but why did they have to have the big bad bully of a bookie who makes all the money from his slot machines played by a 'southerner' - a cockney? It's as if everything is blamed on the south east of the country - the priest says this in one of his sermons in the final episode - and sometimes the script takes a heavy hammer to the subject when a more subtle approach might have been more acceptable; I mean I've seen tally men in Manchester fleecing the poor housewife who's run out of money but the whole piece is very highly recommended, nonetheless, and very watchable with beautiful music and songs by Nina Simone and Ray Davies. The last thing I would say about this series is that it is very difficult to work out if it is pro or anti Catholic or even religion; the priest is a good man and does good work and where would we be without the work of the church but they preach to us telling us that there is a God - or a god - and it's as if they help us in the community and expect us to believe. The same dilemma is in the excellent British movie The Singer not the Song with John Mills and Dirk Bogarde.

Firstly I'd just like to start by thanking Jimmy MGovern, for giving us this drama, six parts of compulsive viewing, each episode gives a scarily realistic snapshot of real life. We get cover ups, gambling debts, fraud, bitterness, love and hope. I loved the format, six different episodes, with parallel stories running all the way. Gritty, realistic and heartbreaking, you are attached to every single character and their everyday battles.

Every single episode had me gripped, but I must give a special mention to Episode 2, Andrew, not since Line of Duty have I sat glued to my seat for sixty minutes captivated by what was in front of me. Mark Stanley stood out, but the entire cast were mesmerising. Drama doesn't come much better.

I've always been a massive fan of Sean Bean, I just don't think I'd realised he was THIS good, let's be honest, he was a revelation in this, and if awards don't follow I'll be majorly surprised.

I can find no faults whatsoever, I just wanted more.

Arguably the drama series of 2017. Series 2 has to follow.

10/10.

This, so far, is excellent drama. In my opinion, it is important drama. This is the stuff of real life, of the deeply messy confusion of being human, where at best, and in spite of our best efforts, sometimes even because of our best efforts, we are constantly 'off- target'. For the central character in this story, the bullseye is Christ-like love. For others, it is family, children, the job, being able to tell the truth, and not least, being able to survive and navigate one's own conscience, or otherwise becoming a part of the 'banality of evil' by embracing dishonesty. Quite often, if our conscience still has life, we are torn and in pain, as 'we do what we must do', because someone's going to get hurt no matter how we choose. Or we die as we sleep; the sleep that is sleep because we refuse to feel pain, especially the pain of failure. But we all fail, as we are all broken.

This show encapsulates that difficult truth very well. The acting and cinematography is top-shelf (Sean Bean possibly had the wrong calling to become an actor, whilst of course, his priestly portrayal is so good because he is such a great actor) There has been some very provocative writing and some of it will set Catholic teeth on edge. My teeth have so far been far more put on edge by what I strongly feel is the over-use of violin in scenes which could stand well alone without it. And a few small continuity issues. Other than that, I look forward to the next episode of such an excellent, even spiritually provoking drama. Which will definitely not be everyone's cup of tea. but it is certainly mine thus far.