Decades on from the miners’ strikes of the 1980s, the word “scab” has lost none of its charge in the Nottinghamshire village where James Graham’s latest TV series is set. Each time that it is deployed by Gary Jackson (Alun Armstrong), a former miner who stopped working while many of his colleagues crossed the picket line, it is as if the years drain away and barely concealed resentment and anger rushes to the surface.
Gary lobs the phrase at his neighbours like a grenade; the conflict has ripped through his family, with his wife Julie (Lesley Manville) still barely speaking to her sister Cathy (Claire Rushbrook) because her husband (Kevin Doyle) was among the miners who carried on working. When Gary is walking back from the local miners’ club after a few pints (having narrowly avoided a violent run-in after using his go-to insult on a fellow drinker), he is suddenly struck down by an arrow which flies straight into his heart.
