The Virtues

This is Stephen Graham’s time. With a mainstream turn in Line of Duty and film-stealing cameo in Rocketman, the actor is being talked about as one of Britain’s finest. It’s his role in The Virtues though that finally cements his place in the pantheon of greats. On his shoulders this show rests. He appears in nearly every scene, negotiating clownish wit and fractured masculinity with consummate ease. A lot of Graham’s early work consisted of gangsters; his most iconic roles have been Al Capone in Boardwalk Empire and Combo, a NF member, in This is England; but boy can this lad do soft hands as well as mean eyes.

The Virtues is a Shane Meadows production. He is the co-writer and director of the Channel 4 miniseries. Meadows' films frequently invoke his teen years, where he went off the rails, falling into gangs and petty thieving. Often they begin with knock-about joviality, before descending into explosive violence, leaving lives in debris. Simply, his films pack a punch. Dead Man's Shoes is a picture that has stayed with me for years. I can’t shake it, nor do I want to: it remind us the past can't be unwritten, wrongs will right.

It feels though that Meadows’ work has been building to this. Recently, he spoke in a Guardian interview about his desire to adopt a more European approach to filmmaking, where the scene slows and dissolves into you, as opposed to jabbing you with rat-a-tat-tat dialogue. Also, Meadows’ own buried pain, that’s alluded to in previous work, has been successfully excavated following work with a clinical psychologist. Where the theme of abuse was one of a multitude in This is England, here it is front and centre. Meadows has talked about it in his own life; now, he’s ready to process that catharsis onto screen.

Shane Meadows.

The Virtues begins with Joe coming back from a job on a site. He goes into his Sheffield high rise, runs a bath and looks out the window. He sees children playing. The vista causes him to cry. Next, we’re with him as he walks across town, the camera his only companion. The walk is long which has us wondering why he hasn’t taken transport. Our hunch here is Joe can ill-afford it. The house he arrives in belongs to his ex-wife. She has a lovely partner; together they bring up Joe’s child, Jay. For Joe, this is the Last Supper. His son is being taken away. His ex and her partner though aren’t the cruel stuff of characterisation, rather they're humane and warm to Joe. They want a better life for Jay and judging by Joe’s courtesy at the table one he approves of. The scene where Joe puts Jay into bed and gives his son a pep talk on new beginnings is deeply moving. Joe is a thoroughly decent man willing to relinquish his happiness for his son; put himself on the cross to free his child from sin. For we learn as Joe exits the reason for his estrangement. His ex checks he's going to be alright: ‘You’re not going to … are you?’ The word unspoken is drink. Joe has lost his wife, child and happiness to the bottle. He understands that them going to Australia is penance for his past behaviour.

The next scene is Meadows’ whole career in microcosm. I spoke earlier about the yin-yang collision of comedy and tragedy – well, it’s here too. When Joe goes into a pub to drink his wounds, the hilarity of those first few pints descends into the blackout darkness of those later ones. At first he’s the life and soul, the Pied Piper of Hallam, whistling his flute, corralling them into song and dance through offers of free drinks and easy charm. Joe though is not of stable income; the chip and pin world is not for him. As his reserves get depleted, we begin to worry. This isn’t disposable income; this is rent money he’s putting into the barman’s coffers. When Joe leaves the camera style is redolent of Smack My Bitch Up, the dizzying point-of-view angle captures a man taken by alcoholism, unable to stand or speak straight. The next morning, he awakes to a pool of vomit. Joe can’t drink. Like all addicts, the drink drinks him. Seeing him splayed on the living room floor surrounded by kebab and grime makes us appreciate why his wife left him.

The camera doesn't spare Joe's dignity.

Missing work because of his hangover, Joe knows the sack awaits. With the few pounds he’s got left, he decides to run away to Ireland. Through the episode we’ve had some small signs that Joe is running from something else, with snatches of repressed memory invading the present day. In the next episode we discover he wasn’t running away from his life, but running to his past, in the form of his sister.

He awakes outside her home; his rough sleeping means Anna doesn’t see a brother but a threat to her family’s security. She beckons her husband out and asks him to deal with the tramp. Soon the truth emerges, and brother and sister are re-united after all those years. The two were separated as children following their parents’ death. Anna was taken in by family, but Joe wasn’t. They only had room for one, so the lad was made an orphan. It’s quite clear how that decision has impacted upon them. Anna marshals a mad, happy home where meals are served with banter. Joe, on the other hand, has a broken marriage, budget and psyche. He’s come hoping his sister will fix him.

I remarked earlier about Meadows’ battle to survive the trauma of abuse and it’s no spoiler to say Joe is doing the same. In finding his sister, he risks losing himself. For being back in his childhood town brings memories to the fore. Those snatches of memory earlier become elongated. The grainy footage Meadows adopts to distinguish this becomes more pronounced. The past Joe has buried in alcohol and distraction is scrabbling to the surface. At the moments it’s just a hand, but we know by the end the whole body will be exhumed. Joe can’t run any longer; his childhood is coming.

Joe can't escape what happened to him as a boy.

The subject matter is dark, yet in all Meadows’ work there is light. Not for a second did it feel like misery-lit; a genre designed for the perverse who think reading them qualifies as therapists. No, it isn’t designed for rubberneckers to gawp at, instead something people must understand. Abuse happens to people. But it isn’t the whole thing that happens to them. Joe experiences kindness, humour too. And the comedy in episode three is quite divine. When going to the pub to escape his memories, the barman brings him over a pint; the description of which is sublime, ‘With the collar on that at first, you’d think the Pope was coming.’ Has there ever been a better description to describe a beer with a big head? Later, Joe’s drunkenness means Anna and her sister-in-law, Dinah, must come and collect him. His behaviour in the car with Dinah is outrageously rude, so much so she punches him in the gob. When Joe apologises in the early hours, the pair literally kiss and make up. The invective that follows from Anna is from the Malcolm Tuckeresque. The pay-off section though is something else, ‘Boxing the jaws off him one minute, chawing the jaws off him the next. Very Liz Taylor of you.’ Meadows along with co-writer Jack Thorne have a way with dialogue, but the delivery of Helen Benah is something else. Her effing and jeffing is the stuff of modern poetry, the counter-balance rhyme of ‘boxing’ and ‘chawing’ lyrical, then there’s that incongruous last line of old Hollywood. Combined, it had me howling with laughter.

As with all of Meadows’ work we’re building to a showdown. In the director’s corner is a battle cry I’m yet to mention. PJ Harvey provides the score to this devastating work. And in a thirty year career it’s some of her best music. Meadows' past work is layered with classical piano, the work of Ludovico Einaudi. As beautiful and beguiling as it is, I do feel it's a bit on the nose. Film Reviewer Mark Kermode spoke a few weeks ago about the score of If Beale Street Could Talk, commenting favourably on music that operates like it isn’t there. A good score should hide in plain sight, pickpocketing your emotions, without you realising what's happened. I feel Harvey’s music does the same. It creates an atmosphere without making a spectacle of itself. It’s less ‘look at me,’ more ‘look at this.’ And so it should, because The Virtues is a wonder. 

Funnelled through Stephen Graham, Meadows has created a vital work that will speak to many adults who were child victims. For the rest of us, it reminds us to protect the young because one day they will grow up. Those little hands become fists. Those innocent eyes sharp. Those joys numbed. This fate will befall them if adults mistreat them. And be sure, the consequences will be felt in fire, blood, anguish. How such a hellish topic can be communicated so wondrously is a credit to Meadows, the divine creator. The Virtues is his most complete work. Watch it and be enthralled. Watch it and be appalled.

The Virtues is available on All4.