James Walton

A masterclass in evenhandedness: James Graham’s Sherwood reviewed

Plus: you need a degree in quantum physics to understand SkyMax’s The Lazarus Project

Man in the middle: David Morrissey as DCS Ian St Clair in James Graham’s Sherwood. Credit: BBC/House Productions/Matt Squire

James Graham has made his considerable name writing political-based dramas of a highly unusual type: non-polemical ones. And this certainly applies to his television work as well as his stage plays. Coalition (about the 2010 Conservative-Lib Dem alliance) and Brexit: The Uncivil War (which gave Dominic Cummings the signal honour of being played by Benedict Cumberbatch) both went so far as to suggest that most politicians try to do the right thing. Even when he abandoned politics to supply the lockdown hit Quiz, Graham’s unfashionable commitment to centrism remained. Rather than taking sides on the ‘coughing major’ scandal, he extended sympathy and understanding to all involved.

Quiz was also the nearest he’d come to a crime drama until this week’s Sherwood. Or at least crime drama is how it’s being billed – not unreasonably given that the first two episodes brought us one definite murder and a possible second. Nonetheless, the crime stuff never feels quite where Graham’s heart lies. Instead, it seems more like a perfectly serviceable, BBC1-friendly framework for what he’s really interested in: the continuing legacy of the 1984-5 miners’ strike in the kind of Nottinghamshire pit village where he grew up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlOnPON3cOs

Graham’s even-handedness reaches almost Shakespearean levels of personal inscrutability

The strike, as several characters noted, was a long time ago. Which is presumably why the series started with a helpful newsreel montage reminding us that many Nottinghamshire miners had carried on working. After that, we cut to Sarah, a present-day Conservative candidate in local elections, who was spending the morning of her wedding ‘flyering’ (these days, it appears, you can verb nearly any word) in what had become a Red Wall seat. The wedding itself then proved a handy way of introducing the other characters – virtually all played by big-name TV actors on top form – who duly cover the political spectrum.

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