I liked the three series of Jimmy McGovern’s prison
drama Time, and I think he’s generally a class act (with Cracker being
the pinnacle of his work, in my view). But there’s perhaps a key weakness here
with Time - or at least, a potential weakness at this stage of his
career. The attempted Christian faith subtext is, in my view, weakened by the
fact that the writer isn’t conveying how stupendous the subject matter can be
when grace is revealed in action. In other words, with the writer’s own faith,
there’s a danger that it comes across as not strong or devoted enough to convey
how capacious God’s love is when expressed through people like Marie-Louise,
the chaplain.
Just as comedy isn’t as funny if there’s no smidgen of truth at the heart of it, faith-based subtext isn’t as powerful if there isn’t strong faith at the heart of the creative dispensations. It’s similar to what the philosopher Simone Weil’s pointed out when she said that:
“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating.”
Similarly, the most authentic grace is rarely timid or merely therapeutic - it erupts from the author’s pen or keyboard in an unmistakable way. Because there is no mistaking forgiving what seems unforgivable, and loving those who seem most unlovable. At its most potent, it takes possession of us, and leaves us in no doubt that we are tapping into something extraordinary.
With Time, I felt similar to how I felt with his previous drama Unforgivable – he understated what the transformation would look like if grace really did break through. The vivid sense of humanity's fallenness is handled with aplomb, but less so the breathtaking horizon towards which astounding grace points.
Now, I want to be sure I’m being fair to Jimmy McGovern here. I sense with Time that what he is doing is choosing to depict a scenario in subdued form because he is still writing about damaged people living in damaged institutions, but crucially, where the chaplain has lost faith in the system and is struggling with her own faith.
That may not strike me as strange - it’s great to explore a diverse range of feelings and emotions associated with the Christian faith, including the pain, struggles and doubts. The strange part, for me, though, is the timing. If a writer's work exhibits a developing, cumulative theological comprehension, then one might expect later works to deepen rather than diminish insights previously explored. Building on the wisdom of past prologues,
I find myself wondering why Time seemed like theological retrogression in light of his brilliant drama Broken that aired about ten years ago. I think McGovern did the faith subtext better in Broken than in subsequent works like Time or Unforgivable – although the latter two dramas do very well in heeding Bonhoeffer’s warning about ‘cheap grace’. In Broken, Sean Bean brilliantly portrays a Catholic priest trying to shepherd deeply wounded people while carrying his own scars, but where the grace shone through much more tangibly, and not all cheaply either.
To be crystal clear, none of this diminishes McGovern's gifts as a writer, which remain formidable. If anything, it is because he has previously shown himself capable of portraying grace so memorably in Broken that the relative restraint of Time and Unforgivable feels noteworthy to me. In Time and Unforgivable, McGovern once again demonstrates an extraordinary understanding of human brokenness. What feels less certain, in my estimation, is whether he still believes, imaginatively at least, in a grace sufficiently large to redeem it.
