We believed in Father Michael because Bean made us believe. He showed us a conflicted man who channelled feelings of hopelessness into offering hope to others. It helped that Bean turned in the performance of his career. Not in his god, nor in the belief that there was goodness in this world. He might have struggled with his vocation but he never lost faith. Thus, one of the most interesting things about Father Michael was that despite the abuse he suffered as a child, at the hands of the fathers who taught him, and even though he applied those lessons to the wider world as a young man, he came to realise that they were wrong. He might have struggled with his vocation, but he never lost faith … Father Michael Kerrigan (Sean Bean). Instead it interrogated the very nature of faith: what leads a person to believe, and why you might live out your entire life as an act of atonement. The abuse scandals, the attitude towards women, the obsession with ritual at the cost of reality were addressed, but overall the show was not condemnatory. This was not television intent on mocking the church or its believers, nor keen to hammer home its many flaws. Yet Broken was an astute depiction of organised religion in general, and the Catholic church in particular. ![]() McGovern is no longer a practising Catholic, and his leading man admits his childhood church attendance was sporadic at best. And while Broken did tackle these things with McGovern’s trademark blend of wit and rage, it was above all a celebration of community and the connections we should all try to find. The headlines before the show aired spoke about Broken Britain, of poverty and debt and job losses. In the first episode, Anna Friel’s Christina was fired from her job at the local bookies her boss later admitted to Father Michael in confession that she had reacted so strongly because she’d had bad news of her own that morning.īut if McGovern homed in on how the most minute events can set off a cataclysm in someone else’s life, he also focused on the equally small acts of kindness that transform someone’s day. Photograph: Tony Blake/BBCīroken was full of such heartbreaking instances. Predictable stuff, but given dramatic heft by the granite-faced Bean.Full of heartbreaking moments … Broken. ![]() The beatific stranger is invited for dinner and the clock starts ticking to a showdown. But co-writer/director Jason Bourque's interest lies in the disconnect between button pushed and lethal damage wreaked, so when a well-spoken Pakistani business traveller (Patrick Sabongui, as seen in definitive drone TV series Homeland) turns up as a prospective buyer for the Bean family boat in their suburban driveway, we're way ahead of the outcome. ![]() Drones have reached cliché status in contemporary action cinema - Good Kill, Eye in the Sky, London Has Fallen - likewise the muted, pixilated aerial footage of explosive destruction in faraway lands, as per the prologue to this latest spin. This low-octane chamber piece-cum-home-invasion thriller pulls the rug from beneath Sean Bean's American dad, whose work as a covert drone pilot is kept secret from his wife (Mary McCormack) and - neon-sign irony alert! - shoot-'em-up game-playing teenage son (Maxwell Haynes).
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