Apart from a black family from the West Indies all the cast were 'northerners' but why did they have to have the big bad bully of a bookie who makes all the money from his slot machines played by a 'southerner' - a cockney? It's as if everything is blamed on the south east of the country - the priest says this in one of his sermons in the final episode - and sometimes the script takes a heavy hammer to the subject when a more subtle approach might have been more acceptable I mean I've seen tally men in Manchester fleecing the poor housewife who's run out of money but the whole piece is very highly recommended, nonetheless, and very watchable with beautiful music and songs by Nina Simone and Ray Davies. The performances are generally excellent and played for realism but everything seemed to be blamed on the southerners. Then we have a scene at the Social Security office, after she is fired, which we have seen in films by Ken Loach and Tony Garnet but we go a little further in this story. The first episode tells you what the whole series is about when a character is found 'borrowing money' from the till of her employer just to feed her kids. His demons attack him every time he performs the Eucharist - if perform is the right word - and images from his past flood through his mind every time he takes the piece of bread before he turns it into Christ. This is a priest, though, with a past a past of the ordinary red blooded male who becomes a priest after he has sewn his wild oats and he questions the faith and whether he is fit enough to even be a priest. Bean plays a maverick of a priest with unconventional approaches and attitudes to religion and a very chatty way of delivering the sermon and the mass. The playing of the priest by Sean Bean is as natural a performance that you will see anywhere. This is not a perfect series it all adds up in the end, but each episode is devoted to a different character and plot line, and some of those slip in to following episodes.
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