{"id":373787,"date":"2026-03-31T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/373787\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:01:09","slug":"siobhan-cullen-is-quietly-searing-in-beautifully-made-show-suffused-with-dread-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/373787\/","title":{"rendered":"Siobh\u00e1n Cullen is quietly searing in beautifully made show suffused with dread \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

There aren\u2019t many laughs in Babies (BBC One, Monday), Stefan Golaszewski\u2019s at times oppressively intense account of a thirtysomething couple\u2019s frustrated attempts at starting a family. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s beautifully made, and the Dublin actor Siobh\u00e1n Cullen<\/a>, from The Dry, Obituary and Bodkin, is quietly searing as Lisa, an Irishwoman in London whose longing for a baby with her partner, Stephen (Paapa Essiedu<\/a>), is met with repeated heartache and disappointment.<\/p>\n

Few punches are pulled: whatever else Babies is, it\u2019s certainly not an easy watch. So suffused with dread is one early scene, in which Lisa and Stephen arrive for her 12-week scan only to be told there\u2019s no sign of a heartbeat, that you might want to take a walk afterwards.<\/p>\n

But here, Golaszewski also shows his hand somewhat by laying on their pre-scan excitement a bit too heavily. Lisa has already had one miscarriage, and her certainty that all is right the second time around feels like a betrayal of a character who would surely have approached so significant a check-up with a degree of caution.<\/p>\n

Instead, she and Stephen skip into the clinic, unburdened by any worries that things might go wrong. Golaszewski plays up their joy more than he needs to in order to heighten the horror when their dreams are crushed. That may sound like a quibble, but Babies clearly places great stock in its authenticity. Here it falls short of the standards it has set itself.<\/p>\n

\"It’sIt\u2019s not clear what point Babies is making beyond the trite observation about the unfairness of a universe where terrible people get to have kids while well-meaning ones go through heartbreak. Photograph: Nick Wall\/Blueprint Pictures\/BBC <\/p>\n

Still, the series is to be applauded for soberly and sensitively addressing the anguish of not being able to have a child, and the related pain of going through a miscarriage. There is a horribly plausible sequence in which Lisa arrives at a party to celebrate the arrival of another nephew for Stephen \u2013only for it all to become too much, leading her to run off for a cry.<\/p>\n

Cullen has been impressive both in good dramas (Obituary<\/a>) and in atrocious ones (Bodkin<\/a>), and she has an easy chemistry with Essiedu, who is about to become globally famous as Severus Snape in the forthcoming Harry Potter TV reboot.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Siobh\u00e1n Cullen on Babies: \u2018It\u2019s crazy to me that I had come this far without knowing so much\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

But Golaszewski, who chronicled bereavement in his bittersweet Lesley Manville<\/a> sitcom Mum, is less assured when drawing a contrast between Stephen and his irritating pal from college, Dave (Jack Bannon). The latter is played as an annoying banter merchant who blunders into a relationship with an emotionally reserved older woman, Amanda (Charlotte Riley) while neglecting his own son.<\/p>\n

\"JackJack Bannon as Dave and Charlotte Riley as Amanda in Babies. Photograph: Nick Wall\/Blueprint Pictures\/BBC <\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear what point Babies is making beyond the trite observation about the unfairness of a universe where terrible people get to have kids while well-meaning ones go through heartbreak. Yet Dave is ultimately just a sideshow: he doesn\u2019t meaningfully detract from a series that has the laudable aim of helping people who have struggled with fertility feel seen and acknowledged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There aren\u2019t many laughs in Babies (BBC One, Monday), Stefan Golaszewski\u2019s at times oppressively intense account of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,93,61,60,162456,49957],"class_list":{"0":"post-373787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bbc","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-paapa-essiedu","13":"tag-siobhan-cullen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}