{"id":797941,"date":"2026-10-10T09:26:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T09:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/797941\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T09:26:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T09:26:08","slug":"time-david-tennant-and-siobhan-finneran-are-stellar-in-this-horrifying-and-exceptional-tv-drama-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/797941\/","title":{"rendered":"Time: David Tennant and Siobhan Finneran are stellar in this horrifying and exceptional TV drama | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes a lot to drag me away from comfort TV in the autumn. Blame the shrinking hours of light or the apocalyptic news cycle but the closest thing I like to get to televisual trauma in October is watching comedians get into their own graves in The Celebrity Traitors. I doubt I\u2019m alone. I don\u2019t want to psychoanalyse the British public but I\u2019d take a punt that collectively we are just about capable right now of looking at Josh Widdicombe trying to find a purpose next to Emma Willis on the Strictly dancefloor (and reportedly<\/a>, even that\u2019s a struggle).<\/p>\n

Enter legendary Jimmy McGovern with a new series of the Bafta-winning prison drama Time (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One) to drag the nation out of its Bake Off-related coma. Having already covered the devastation of men\u2019s and women\u2019s prisons in the first two series, the good news is that McGovern and co-writer Samuel Bailey\u2019s trilogy surely can\u2019t get any more distressing. The new episodes will be set in *checks notes* a youth offending institution for boys. OK great. It\u2019s about children in prison. Thank you, Jimmy! I hope you\u2019re happy! No one else is going to be.<\/p>\n

Of course, McGovern \u2013 long known for tackling social realism and institutional injustice in iconic shows such as Cracker, The Lakes and Hillsborough \u2013 is not going to put the viewer through the wringer without proper reason. As prison overcrowding<\/a> dominates the headlines, alongside the multifaceted crisis<\/a> among young men<\/a>, Time series three is so urgent and prescient that you wonder if the BBC were tempted to change the title to Time(ly).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Still, best brace yourself before going in. Within 90 seconds, a teenage boy is being dragged horizontally by five adult guards to his cell; a hand half-covering his jaw as he screams obscenities. That hand belongs to David Tennant<\/a>, playing veteran prison officer Bobby Bailey. Tennant is an impressively blank slate as Bailey: a figure who is almost always on screen but has such sparse dialogue and emotion that at times he is \u2013 in classic McGovern fashion \u2013 defined by his ordinariness and hard to box as \u201cgoody\u201d or \u201cbaddy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s joined by Happy Valley\u2019s Siobhan Finneran who returns as prison chaplain Marie-Louise \u2013 the only common thread through all three series and a rare merciful sign\u00a0of, dare I say it, hope. <\/p>\n

Tennant and Finneran both give stellar performances but it\u2019s the three young actors playing new offenders who will surely be stars of the future. There\u2019s Peter (Ollie McNulty), caught between the death of an innocent man and loyalty to his community, and James (Louis McCartney), struggling to face his broken parents after a life-changing act of\u00a0violence. Then there\u2019s Christopher (a heartbreaking Chukwubuikem Molokwu) battling\u00a0a stammer and reconnecting with his birth mother.<\/p>\n

One of Time\u2019s strengths is its exceptional writing, but it is not afraid to say plenty without a word. The white vans that transport the boys to jail with tiny square black windows for pockets of light. The gates in D-wing that are rarely opened and keep its violent not-yet-men apart (\u201cGates are dangerous,\u201d Tennant tells Finneran ominously). Cells named \u201cRoom 29\u201d, as if the boys are on a hostel break for the week \u2013 an illusion that\u2019s only broken when you realise there\u2019s not a scene that takes place in the wing that\u2019s not accompanied by the\u00a0sound of screaming.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is a lesson in tension, each minute in the prison dragging the viewer further into the claustrophobia of dread and\u00a0despair.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t give any spoilers but I will say you will be thinking about a moment in the first episode for days. This is not easy viewing but nor should it be. McGovern is not delivering content that plays in the background while you\u2019re scrolling Instagram. It grabs you by the throat, asking you to question whether it\u2019s possible to change or if the horrors of the human-made system dooms certain people \u2013 certain children \u2013 before they ever really get a chance. All of us should\u00a0watch it, not least politicians across the political spectrum. Just maybe stick Bake Off on afterwards to decompress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It takes a lot to drag me away from comfort TV in the autumn. Blame the shrinking hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-797941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}