How do you think you’d do in prison? Wrong! You’d do really, really badly, sorry. Look at you. I don’t know how to say this politely, but you have “Guardian reader” written all over you. You just have the face of someone who intrinsically knows who Nigel Slater is. They’d batter you with pool balls before you could say “Bravo Marina Hyde”.
Anyway, to series two of Time (Sunday 29 October, 9pm, BBC One), which further proves my point. Series one dropped out of nowhere in 2021, and was devastating – Sean Bean quietly saying “Yes boss” a hundred times, Stephen Graham’s tight jaw, Michael Socha’s beautiful gloopy eyebrows and an all-timer threatening bully turn by James Nelson-Joyce. There were these gorgeous spinning parts – Graham’s McNally being hauntingly threatened over the safety of his incarcerated son, Sue Johnston as Bean’s permanently-worried-but-trying-not-to-show-it mum, an uncomfortable prison death where it’s hard to say exactly whose fault it was. I famously feel no emotion and have never cried at a film ever in my life, but Bean’s quest for atonement in the final episode made me sob three separate times, and it was embarrassing for all involved. It really was as-good-as-it-gets British drama with that old stamp of approval at the top of it: “Written by Jimmy McGovern.”
