Time
2021
Original language: English
- drama
- crime
The story
Guilt, violence and impossible choices – what does it take to survive? Tense, gritty and heartbreaking – Jimmy McGovern's award-winning prison drama, with an all-star cast.
What it’s like
Grim, hard-edged and mostly interior: Time is shot in the washed-out greens, greys and sickly fluorescent glare of a British prison, with handheld camera that stays close to faces in cramped corridors, cell doors and canteen tables. Its sound is largely practical, clanging gates, shouted orders, the drone of corridors, with little underscore to soften the blows. Vibe: bleak, tense, quietly devastating. It suits a stormy night in with the lights low when you can take a heavy drama, not a comfort watch. Pacing is taut and episodic, each hour-long instalment a pressure build toward an unforgiving scene. The emotional register is heartbreaking and morally tangled: a new prison officer and the inmates around him are slowly stripped of their certainties, and their arcs turn on guilt, shame and whether anyone can change. Intensity is high: prison violence, fights and brutal beatings appear, along with suicide, drug use, blackmail and scenes of mental illness and addiction; the dread is often as heavy as the physical brutality. For viewers who want gritty, character-driven British drama with no easy consolation.
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