Broken, BBC One review - things look bleak in McGovernville

This is Jimmy McGovern, so it’s no surprise to find ourselves up north and feeling grim.

Here, wherever it is, kindly Father Michael Kerrigan (a sotto voce Sean Bean) does his best to minister to his depressed and impoverished flock, who are struggling to make ends meet both physically and spiritually. In particular, we zero in on Christina Fitzsimmons (Anna Friel, pictured below), a single mother-of-three seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. We first encountered her as she brought her daughter to Father Michael’s church to prepare for her first communion, then had to rush off in near-hysterics to get back to her job in a betting shop.

She needn’t have bothered. Her female boss discovered Christina’s IOU note for 60 quid in the cash box, and sacked her for stealing (ignoring Christina’s wailing protestations that she only “borrowed” it because she was skint and couldn’t feed the kids). This prompted a full-on fist-fight between the women, Christina eventually scarpering from the premises with a bloody nose and a black eye.

The title of Broken, it seems, may refer to many things, and not just noses. Families, social ties, hearts, promises and ambitions all fall under the broad titular rubric. Not to mention the Catholic church, which looms large in the narrative, but in an elephant-in-the-room sort of way. The more Father Kerrigan tries to remind his congregation of the love of Christ and God’s mercy, the less any of them seem to feel it. Kerrigan himself is haunted by horrific flashbacks to beatings and bullying in his childhood, not just from his shrieking harridan mother but from the sadistic Father Fitzpatrick (Tony Guilfoyle, pictured below). Now, his mother is a bedridden invalid, and Kerrigan and his sister have to share the burden of giving her 24/7 care.

No doubt about it, McGovernville is a bleak old dump, though not entirely unleavened by flashes of possibly accidental humour. When the desperate Christina went to sell her rings to raise a bit of emergency cash, this prompted a kind of instructional homily on social breakdown and how the underclass is forced to prey on itself, as the pawnshop man lamented that he had a shitty job which forced him to rip off customers, but he couldn’t afford to quit. When she tried to apply for jobseeker’s allowance, and admitted she’d stolen money and punched her previous employer, the look on her interviewer’s face was priceless.

Things took a turn for even worse when Christina’s mother suddenly died. Bafflingly, her reaction was not to call an ambulance – if there are any in McGovernville – but to wrap her poor old mum in the bedclothes and stick a DO NOT ENTER sign on the door. Why on earth would she do this? Eventually enlightenment was forthcoming – Christina wasn’t going to admit her mam had passed on before she’d collected the old girl’s pension.

“You heartless, scheming bitch,” hissed her sister Mariella (Clare Calbraith) when she eventually found out (by this time the corpse was three days old). As we reached the end credits, saintly Father Kerrigan was with Christina at her mother’s deathbed, wondering how she could avoid going to prison. If you’re looking for misery and squalor, Jimmy has obliged.

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