‘How could someone you love be capable of something like that?’
You know what you’re getting with a Jimmy McGovern project. It’ll be gritty, hard-hitting and steeped in realism. TV shows like Hillsborough, Accused and Time are woven into the fabric of British television. Unforgivable is perhaps the bleakest piece of work that the Liverpool screenwriter has ever put his name to. It’s also brilliant…
The drama centres around sex offender, Joe (Bobby Schofield), and his doomed attempts to reintegrate himself into society after being imprisoned for inappropriately touching his own nephew (played by Austin Haynes). Anna Friel plays Joe’s world-weary sister, Anna, with Anna Maxwell Martin delivering a typically assured performance as Joe’s no-nonsense therapist, Katherine.
Unforgivable forces the viewer to confront some uncomfortable truths here by humanising Joe, a character who, on paper, is a monster, in a way that is convincing and troubling, without ever letting him off the hook. This all hinges on Schofield’s ability to find humanity in a character who has committed a terrible act. Luckily, the Merseyside actor smashes it out of the park. His Joe is an utterly defeated man, all slumped shoulders and downcast eyes, but while this invites sympathy in the first act, despite his abhorrent actions, his vulnerable mournfulness eventually gives way to sullen self-pity. As McGovern himself said prior to the show airing on BBC, Joe’s terrible actions are like a hand grenade going off at the centre of this otherwise ‘normal’ family.
While, in many ways, they are quite different, Unforgivable is a great companion piece to Netflix’s Adolescence (also released in 2025). Both examine the impact of childhood trauma on society at large in a way that is haunting, bleak and visceral – this is vital television.