The coal’s the thing. The first series of Sherwood by James Graham was based on his experiences growing up in a Nottinghamshire pit village. There, the people and culture were shaped first by the shared experience of mining, and then in the 1980s by striking against – or not – the closure of the pits and the end of an industry. The original series was a state-of-the-nation piece played out through two murder mysteries. This return to the village is derived from the period about 10 years later when – as archive news footage and headlines that open the new six-parter remind us – gang-related violence reached such a pitch that the city was nicknamed “Shottingham”.
The divisions of old are still there in Sherwood’s second outing, but the more pressing issue is how you deal with a disaffected generation who lack their parents’ and grandparents’ sense of purpose and about communities that have nothing to cohere around any more. This time, the question plays out through the murder of a young man that brings Ian St Clair (David Morrissey) out of “retirement” – he has left the police to take up a crime-prevention role as a local anti-violence tsar – and matriarch of the feared Sparrow clan Daphne (Lorraine Ashbourne, coming into her kingdom after spending most of the original series in the background) back into the world of extremely criminal activity indeed. Her younger son Ronan (Bill Jones) is a witness to the murder. The dead man’s parents are Anne and Roy Branson (Monica Dolan, superbly grief-stricken and terrifying, and Stephen Dillane, prowling behind her), the heads of a rival crime family who are now, insistently, out for revenge.
The killer is Ryan Bottomley (Oliver Huntingdon), a troubled twentysomething who has had to be excluded from his family – stepmother Pam (Sharlene Whyte) and sister Stephie (Bethany Asher), who now live with Pam’s brother Dennis (David Harewood). They become – devastatingly so – caught up in the terrible events that unfold with all the precision, gravity and inevitability of a Greek tragedy. So too does Ian’s replacement on the force, DCS Harry Summers (Michael Balogun), who is investigating the Branson murder while evidently in danger of being consumed by some past trauma.
All of this is set against the potential reopening of the local mine. A retrograde step, in the minds of most, with the potential to reopen wounds that were just beginning to heal; a life-changing opportunity to regenerate the area, according to Samuel Warner (Robert Emms) and his father, Franklin (Robert Lindsay, in case you needed a reminder that Graham is the heir to Alan Bleasdale), the businessmen spearheading the campaign.
Everything that made Sherwood great the first time round is still here (including Lesley Manville, who returns as the widowed Julie Jackson). The personal folds into the political and vice versa, a specific world known by the writer to his bones is made universal and compelling to all, and everything seems to happen organically, unshowily and brutally convincingly. This is simply because at almost every moment you know this is how these people, these characters Graham has conjured with such love, care and talent, would think, speak and act. There are occasional dips into agitprop – a clunky speech about lack of investment in young people and the resulting recidivism stands out – and a scene between Dennis and traumatised detective Summers about lost treasure feels like it’s reaching, but this is quibbling of the highest (or lowest) order.
Like the original, it’s stuffed to the gills with brilliant performances. The old guard – Manville, Morrissey, Ashbourne – remain immaculate. And the new introductions, from stalwarts like Harewood, Dolan and Dillane to relative newcomers like Huntingdon – who radiates a mixture of pain, need and dangerous fury that has you watching in horrified anticipation of the moment of combustion – join them seamlessly.
In a way, it feels more timely than the first Sherwood did, deeply though the original resonated. This time, you don’t have to have any memory of a specific event like the miners’ strikes (which feel like ancient history to so many, though you can hardly believe it). The latest outing chimes with our growing contemporary anxiety about fragmenting communities, about alienation, about the malevolent figures who rush to fill a vacuum created by unemployment, poverty and unmet needs of all kinds. We are in an age of unrest. The new Sherwood looks to how and why we got there. I hope Julie can have a crack at solving us again.
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