It’s strange that one of the best things you’ll see on TV all year should never have been made. Lucy Kirkwood, the Olivier Award-winning playwright, wrote Maryland for the stage last year, in response to the murders of Sarah Everard, Sabina Nessa, Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman. It took her just 48 hours, crystallising from a mix of anger, sadness and exhaustion. After a scratch-style run at The Royal Court Theatre, the BBC has made it into a film, so that anyone can watch it. And everyone should.
Directed on screen by Kirkwood herself and documentary-maker Brian Hill, Maryland is a 25-minute jolt; the world it occupies is an uncanny one. All the women are called Mary, for a start. Zawe Ashton and Hayley Squires play two women who meet at a police station, where they are both reporting an experience of sexual assault. Ashton’s Mary is shell-shocked. She cries tears of frustration when faced with an identity parade of hat-wearing men; her attacker had a scar on his forehead. Squires’ Mary is full of simmering fury, unwilling to give up on walking home alone in the dark. They are cajoled into small talk by a police officer called Moody (Daniel Mays), who is wistful but incurious about the fact that his mum – also called Mary – always seemed anxious and worried.
