In the Club and Kids Behind Bars review – antenatal angst and US teens doing time
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Version 0 of 1. Kay Mellor's new six-part drama, In The Club (BBC1), centres on characters who all go to the same antenatal class. Whether or not you find this an inherently interesting premise may depend on whether you've ever attended an antenatal class. If you have, you probably didn't walk away thinking: "You know what? This would form the perfect basis for a six-part BBC drama." Well, I didn't, anyway. The main female characters – including a midwife – are all pregnant, which is a big dramatic stumbling block: they're basically facing the same problem. The solution is that they all have dramatically different back stories: Roanna is going through an acrimonious divorce while having a baby with a new and much younger partner; there's a lesbian couple, Kim and Susie, aiming for a child apiece from the same father; there's 15-year old Rosie, who isn't in the class but does read Kim's blog. And more. At least two more. The men are divided into well-meaning idiots and non-well-meaning idiots. Roanna's soon-to-be-ex is very much the latter. Diane's Rick is a stand-out example of the former: he has failed to tell his pregnant wife he was made redundant five months back. He has failed to confront the resulting financial crisis. He is unable to deny his two older children a trip to a pizza restaurant, even though he hasn't got the money to pay for it. His answer to this particular conundrum is to nip out and rob a bank. Some effort has been expended to make this seem a less than preposterous turn of events, but I don't really believe there's such a thing as a soft-hearted bank robber just trying to make ends meet in a tough economic climate. This first episode seemed designed to get everybody into as much trouble as possible before the next instalment (there was a car wreck at the end that struck me as positively gratuitous). Overall, it's intricately and deftly plotted, and I accept that a lot of information needs to be doled out in the initial hour. My chief complaint about In The Club is that it's so unremittingly gloomy. Even the lighter moments had a leaden cast. There was plenty of room here for dark humour, but all we got were wan smiles about swollen feet. And not even that from Tara Fitzgerald, who was properly cross throughout. Kids Behind Bars (ITV) bore all the hallmarks of a bleak examination of America's broken justice system. But it wasn't that, quite. Yes, it was about teenagers doing unimaginable stretches in a maximum security facility big enough to have a dedicated block for underage offenders. But there was also an emphasis on the humanity at work behind the fences. Block D staff take seriously their obligation to raise and educate deeply troubled boys, in an environment designed to offer shelter from the general prison population. Lest we forget, they are also boys who have committed serious crimes. To be tried as an adult in the state of Indiana, you must have repeatedly reoffended in the youth system, or done something of a particularly horrific nature. Jesus, aged 17, is serving 65 years for murder. Marquise, meanwhile, is serving 15 years for aggravated battery, a charge that rather obscures the nature of his offence: he joined his mother and uncle in a concerted attack that left the victim dead of a gunshot wound. "They charged me like a man," he said. "I'm gonna step up like a man and do my time." Having turned 18, he will soon be moving in with the adult prisoners. For some of the boys it's likely that prison provides a more stable home environment than anything life outside has to offer. "We have several in there right now that have seen a parent kill another parent," said case worker Alita. This was a sobering look at an intractable problem; it left one feeling that Block D was a regrettable but wholly necessary part of the penal landscape, a place where young offenders are cared for as children by a state that didn't have the sense to try them as children. But if you were simply looking to be outraged by America's broken justice system, you needed to look no further than Blake, who just turned 18 in jail. Blake's crime – committed when he was 16 – was to break into what he thought was an empty house with four of his friends, only for one of them to be shot dead by the homeowner while the rest cowered in a closet. Under Indiana law, it is possible for the four surviving burglars to be charged with the murder of their friend. Blake is currently serving a 55-year sentence. |