Jimmy McGovern's grimly brilliant new series Time should be required viewing for all of those happy to proclaim that prisons are cushy holiday camps but who feel that occasionally having to wear a small rectangle of fabric over your face and nose constitutes an appalling and unacceptable affront to the liberty won by Our Brave Boys in the Second World War.
As Owen Jones has noted in a column for the Guardian, the reality of life behind bars in the UK, at least, is as violent and dangerous as portrayed on screen, a dog-eat-dog world in which punishment rather than rehabilitation is the priority. "The brutal truth", he writes, "is that mass incarceration very often means locking up people who grew up in poverty, in poor mental health and from disproportionately minority backgrounds."
His hope - and presumably McGovern's too - is that Time might just give a few people pause for thought and actually prove to be a catalyst for change. As the BBC's most watched new drama of the year so far, it's possible.
Anyway, here's my review for Buzz.
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