Unforgivable review – Jimmy McGovern's mesmeric new drama is even better than Adolescence

The Guardian

3 days ago

f'We pray for it every day, but it's man's will that gets done, not God's.' Thus speaks a former nun, pretty much an emblematic character of a Jimmy McGovern drama, delivering an emblematic line. McGovern has always been a chronicler of pressing social issues, from police incompetence and corruption (Hillsborough) to government failures and cover-ups (Sunday, Reg), class struggle (Dockers), disability (Go Now), religious hypocrisy (Priest, Broken), violence (Anthony, Time) and the brokenness of systems supposedly set up to help our most vulnerable (Care).
But whatever the issue under examination and – usually – excoriation, there is the profounder concern of how far from grace we have fallen. From there, McGovern asks: what would it take for us to rise again?
His latest creation, Unforgivable, takes child sexual abuse as its subject. McGovern has brought together trusted members of, in effect, the repertory company he has gathered over the years – including Annas Friel and Maxwell Martin – to tell the story of an ordinary family trying to cope with the aftermath of a terrible act; the abuse of a young teenager, Tom (Austin Haynes), by his uncle Joe (Bobby Schofield, playing the character as unmonstrously as he is written, making his actions and the ramifications all the more awful for it).
Tom is now getting into trouble at school and is virtually mute, answering only yes or no to direct questions, and Joe is about to be released from his short spell in prison. Tom's mother – Joe's sister – Anna (Friel, in an absolutely wonderful performance) is a mass of rage, despair and shock, with no time to process any of it as she fights to keep her job, her inevitably neglected other son out of trouble and Tom from descending further into mental ill health.
Anna and Joe's mother dies soon after the story begins and the first moral quandary arises – should he be allowed to attend her funeral? Would she – the only family member to visit him in prison – have wanted it? Their father, Brian (David Threlfall), forbids Joe to come. When Anna later bumps into Joe in the cemetery, in breach of his licence, she reports him to his parole officer, who redraws the boundaries of the exclusion zone rather than recall him to prison. What would you have done?
Small questions pave the way for larger ones. Where do you stand on the fact that, as Anna points out in fury, Joe has had access to copious amounts of therapy in prison and now lives in a special halfway-house-cum-rehab-facility, run by a former nun, Katherine (Maxwell Martin), while Tom has had nothing? McGovern's work is always grounded in detail, especially that relating to systemic inadequacies; we sit with Anna through the GP's explanation that there is a 21-week waiting list for even 'the worst' children to be seen. It takes a suicide attempt to get Tom even that far.
Eventually, we move to the question inherent in the title: can Joe be forgiven? How much weight do we give his assertions of self-loathing? Should we feel touched by his apparent remorse? Should Anna? How much should Brian let love for his son govern his actions when the rest of his family has been devastated?
When it emerges that Joe was abused at the same age as Tom, it is not a plot twist to sway our sympathies – McGovern is an unsentimental and unmanipulative writer – but to force us to think more deeply. Does it make him less culpable for his actions? Or more damnable, because he knew the effect one act can have on a life? His abuser also harmed others who did not perpetuate the cycle, so what do we do with that knowledge? Space is left for any conclusion. None of us knows God's will, whether you believe in him or not.
Unforgivable has none of the agitprop that can creep into McGovern's always impassioned work and there are faultless performances throughout, including from Mark Womack, a sleeper agent of an actor who delivers invariably to mesmeric effect. It is an altogether richer, more subtle and more sophisticated creation than, say, Adolescence, to which it is likely to be compared; as such, it is unlikely to be adopted as a pseudo policy document by the government.
More's the pity. It has an immeasurable sorrow at its heart and offers no answers. It leaves you feeling that this is exactly as it should be; exactly as it must be.
Unforgivable aired on BBC Two and is available on BBC iPlayer now