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Author Topic: "Broken" Reviews  (Read 9910 times)

Offline patch

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"Broken" Reviews
« on: April 25, 2017, 06:17:25 AM »
[Review] Broken: Sean Bean in spiritual turmoil

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Since the first season of Game of Thrones, Sean Bean has become practically a divinity for the series.  The British series Broken brings him back to the forefront as a tormented priest from a poor neighborhood of an English town.

 A staged production, but with a lot of nervousness.  It is undeniable that Broken is a series of an incredible visual beauty, both in its way to capture atmospheres and in the richness of its frames.  Nevertheless, by being so complex, we lose contact with what happens on the screen.  For a subtle subject, the realization is simply too much of a brush.

 Living or surviving?  In the first two episodes, we discover a panoply of broken human beings, who always try to keep their heads high.  Broken develops non-Manichaean characters and asks if there is really good and evil.  Again, one discovers an English series that deals with the fundamental subjects with rigor and know-how.

 Episodes 1 and 2 of Broken were broadcast at the Festival Séries mania 2017 .  The series currently has no release date in France.
https://translate.google.nl/translate?hl=nl&sl=fr&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Flinfotoutcourt.com%2Fcritique-broken%2F

https://linfotoutcourt.com/critique-broken/






« Last Edit: April 25, 2017, 06:44:34 AM by patch »

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #1 on: May 20, 2017, 03:07:59 PM »

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2017, 12:26:24 PM »
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I was all set to scoff at Broken, Jimmy McGovern’s new series for BBC1 (30 May, 9pm). A drama about a Catholic priest and his impoverished parish in a “major northern city”, it sounded so hilariously McGovern-by-numbers (“Eh, lad, give us the collection bowl – the leccy wants paying”) that on paper it could pass for a spoof. Even funnier, Sean Bean, late of Game of Thrones, was to play the clergyman in question.

Naturally, I adore Bean, who comes from the major northern city that is Sheffield, as I do, and who is so terribly . . . virile (though when I interviewed him in a car park behind King’s Cross Station a few years ago, and a security guard in a high-vis jacket approached us furiously shouting the odds, he ran and hid in his trailer, leaving yours truly to face the music). But let’s face it: he’s not exactly versatile, is he? The idea of him in a cassock, or even just a mud-coloured cardigan, made me laugh out loud.

Settling down to watch the series, however, I soon realised that no scoffing would be taking place. For one thing, Broken is hugely involving, its Dickensian plot (no spoilers here) as plausible as it is macabre. For another, in the present circumstances, its script seems to be rather daring. Not only is Father Michael Kerrigan shown – cover my eyes with the collected works of Richard Dawkins! – to be a good and conscientious priest, but his faith is depicted as a fine and useful thing. If he brings his besieged parishioners solace, he is sure to be carrying vouchers for the food bank as well.

The flashbacks from which he suffers – in which his mammy can be heard calling him a “dirty, filthy beast” and a spiteful old priest is seen applying a cane to his hand – are undoubtedly clichéd. But they are also a device. Forty years on, he is happy to nurse his dying mother, and his love for God is undimmed: two facts that are not, of course, unrelated. How weirdly bold for a television series to set its face against the consensus that denigrates all things Christian as it never would any other faith.

i don’t for a minute buy Anna Friel as Christina, the gobby, broke single mother Kerrigan is determined to help. Even when covered in bruises – a bust-up at the betting shop – Friel manages to look glossy, and she never, ever quits acting (with a capital A), which is a drag. But Bean is such a revelation, I was able to ignore the voice in my head which kept insisting that a Catholic priest as young as he is – in this realm, “young” is a couple of years shy of 60 – would surely be Polish or African (I’m not a Catholic but I am married to one, for which reason I occasionally go to Mass)
 
He plays Kerrigan, whose overwhelming desire to be kind sometimes makes him cack-handed, with great gentleness, but also with an uninflected ordinariness that is completely convincing. Part of the problem (my problem, at least) with Communion is the lack of rhetorical passion in most priests’ voices, something he captures perfectly.
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2017/05/broken-and-trial-sean-bean-playing-priest-real-life-lawyers

Offline lab183

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2017, 03:51:25 PM »
Is it possible to really be angry at the reviewer and at the same time acknowledge that he sees the error in his previous judgement? "not versatile" MY ASS! Ugh! I guess our lad showed him!!!  :phbbbt

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #4 on: May 31, 2017, 12:55:09 AM »
Broken review – Jimmy McGovern blasts us with his misery cannon in this bruising drama
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Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was … Sean Bean! Through the lattice, playing a Catholic priest – Father Michael Kerrigan – in Jimmy McGovern’s Broken (BBC1). You don’t think of Sean Bean – Richard Sharpe, Ned Stark, -Boromir – as being cut from that kind of cloth. But he makes an excellent priest: a good listener, principled, pious, compassionate. Not without his own -issues – flashbacks to a troubled past, an abusive childhood, a complex relationship with his mother and more than a little creeping doubt. But I’d want that – questioning, rather than blind faith – from my priest. I’d be happy to confess my sins to Father Michael.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/may/31/broken-review-jimmy-mcgovern-misery-cannon-bruising-drama



Broken episode 1 review
Jimmy McGovern’s moving new six-part drama starring Sean Bean and Anna Friel is anchored by excellent performances…
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As strong as Friel is, Broken belongs to Bean. As Father Michael, he's a rare thing on gritty TV drama, a good priest and a good man, played by an undeniably great actor.
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/sean-bean/49655/broken-episode-1-review


Last Night's TV reviewed: Broken
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Bean’s performance last night was brilliant at capturing the double nature of the main character.
http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-radio/811099/TV-review-BBC-Broken-Anna-Friel



Jimmy McGovern’s Broken is timely but tough to watch: review
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Craggy, careworn Sean Bean played against hard man type as the flawed Father Michael Kerrigan, determined to help but beset by his own problems. Soulful, soft-spoken and haunted by childhood trauma, he took so many people’s problems on his shoulders, they were soon pushing him down onto his knees.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2017/05/30/jimmy-mcgoverns-broken-timely-tough-watch-review/




Broken review: Anna Friel and Sean Bean are a dream team in Jimmy McGovern’s bleak new drama
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Credit also has to be given to Sean Bean for his turn as Father Michael Kerrigan, a priest with a past whose work takes him to Christina’s town. Michael is a man of the cloth that you’d want to go for a drink with, and Bean absolutely nails the quieter moments when he is tortured by memories of his abusive childhood. He and Friel have great chemistry – his reservedness and stoicism plays well against Friel’s hopped up energy.
 
http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/30/broken-review-anna-friel-and-sean-bean-are-a-dream-team-in-jimmy-mcgoverns-bleak-new-drama-6673026/




Broken episode one review: a crucial story about poverty and faith in modern Britain
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Meanwhile, Father Michael is observing the crisis in his community. Bean is excellent in his role as the troubled priest – never patronising, but weighed down with the burden of compassion and responsibility.
 


Jimmy McGovern's gut-wrenching drama Broken is bleak, but still impresses viewers
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Jimmy McGovern's drama – about a well-respected Catholic priest (Sean Bean) presiding over a large parish on the outskirts of a major city in northern England – was not light on heavy themes, and the dark series caused all range of reaction online.

While much of what was seen caused people to comment on the depressing nature of the story, it soon became apparent that viewers were impressed – and ultimately were looking forward to seeing where the bleak plot would travel to next.
 
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a829571/bbc-broken-jimmy-mcgovern-sean-bean-anna-friel-reactions/







« Last Edit: May 31, 2017, 12:56:54 AM by patch »

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2017, 03:09:37 AM »
Broken, BBC One review - things look bleak in McGovernville

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This is Jimmy McGovern, so it’s no surprise to find ourselves up north and feeling grim. The prolific screenwriter’s latest drama series is located in what is described only as “a northern city” (though apparently it’s 60 miles from Sheffield, which would take you to McGovern’s home town of Liverpool as the crow flies).

Here, wherever it is, kindly Father Michael Kerrigan (a sotto voce Sean Bean) does his best to minister to his depressed and impoverished flock, who are struggling to make ends meet both physically and spiritually.
 
http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/broken-bbc-one-review-things-look-bleak-mcgovernville



Broken explores one priest’s conflict in a heartless world
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McGovern’s writing is powerful and Broken has a superb cast with Sean Bean as Father Michael Kerrigan.

He is a good man who is on the side of his parishioners, trying to mediate between them and the harsh realities of 21st century poverty.

Through him religion is portrayed the as revolutionary Karl Marx describes it as “the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions”.
 
https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44714/Broken+explores+one+priests+conflict+in+a+heartless+world


Viewers were in tears after watching new Sean Bean drama Broken
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After being postponed last week in the wake of the Manchester bombing, Jimmy McGovern’s drama Broken finally made it to TV last night – and it’s safe to say its delayed debut still made a real impact.

The story about a priest, played by Sean Bean, who had been abused as a boy and was now trying to help a poor northern community, touched the hearts of viewers around the UK, as did Anna Friel’s performance as a single mum struggling to look after her children.

Overall, then, not a dry eye in the house.
 
http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-05-31/viewers-were-in-tears-after-watching-new-sean-bean-drama-broken



Broken relentlessly maps the landscape of everyday suffering
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There is nothing in Jimmy McGovern’s Broken that audiences haven’t seen before. It’s a tale of unyielding working-class misery. The tears, the wringing exhaustion of a woman teetering on the edge, gripping her children’s hands, winding them down the rainy pathways. Late for something, always just that minute too late as the door slams in their face or the bus whizzes by. It’s there in the shocking realism of early Ken Loach, it’s there in the smoky corners of Mike Leigh films, the social dramas of the Dardenne brothers, a lineage of tired women as piously put upon as the Virgin Mary.
In fact, the only mild diversion comes from Sean Bean’s craggy, kindly priest, Fr Kerrigan, who almost takes on a saintly glow such is his generous involvement in his parishioners lives. Although he has his own fractured psyche to deal with that leaks out in a series of flashbacks to classrooms with paint peeling from the walls and snug family homes that cannot hide their pain.

In a piece that prides itself on its resolute authenticity, the clunky segue into the backgrounds of other characters lives as seen through the confessional box may be a dramatic contrivance too far. With the emphasis on faith, as Christina angrily lashes out at Fr Kerrigan, telling him that it was attending her child’s Holy Communion rehearsals that got her fired and beaten and who knows what next, it asks is there room for faith in lives that are absent of hope?

How can faith possibly give strength or peace in existences relentlessly ground to dust? It would have probably been more interesting (and more believable) if McGovern had eschewed the easy trope of the local priest and the church-going community to express this.

There may be nothing that original in Broken, but these are stories and images that need to be seen again and again to remind us that nothing much has really changed since the days of Cathy Come Home or Kes, and as Britain goes to the polls, it’s asking the important, timely question (that resonates close to home) - how long can lives remain so broken?
 
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-radio-web/broken-relentlessly-maps-the-landscape-of-everyday-suffering-1.3102722





« Last Edit: May 31, 2017, 10:45:10 AM by patch »

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2017, 04:02:40 AM »
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The mere idea of rugged Sean Bean playing a troubled Catholic priest in a grey northern town sounds like a parody of Jimmy McGovern’s morally righteous social realist oeuvre.

Bean plays Michael, a tireless Good Samaritan whose private demons and loneliness mirror the solitary anguish of the locals who turn to him in times of dire need. We’re all broken in one way or another, but we rarely have the courage to admit it. Softly-spoken Father Michael is there to listen and advise without judgement.

A damaged hero for our Godforsaken times, Michael acts as an emblem of much-needed kindness in an increasingly selfish, heartless society; he’s basically everything Gervais tried and spectacularly failed to achieve with Derek.

Michael may be a somewhat idealised figure, but he’s rendered utterly convincing by McGovern’s nuanced writing and Bean’s tender, understated performance.

 
https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/lifestyle/entertainment/tv-film/paul-whitelaw-reviews/438371/tv-column-saturday-3-june-2017/

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2017, 12:04:43 AM »
Television review: This Broken Britain is a grim vision


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The title of the new Jimmy McGovern drama, Broken, is a surprise only in that I had assumed he’d done one called Broken already. The man behind Cracker and Accused hardly specialises in the happy and wholesome. Yet even by his standards, this one is grim.

Sean Bean’s shaky priest has already had flashbacks to his abusive childhood, while Anna Friel’s single mum has been sacked, punched and denied the dole before she finds her mother dead upstairs — then keeps the body hidden for three days so she can pick up the dead woman’s pension. All that in just the first of six episodes. It’s the full Ken Loach, but served as a canapé.


 
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/magazine/culture/television-review-broken-grayson-perry-the-wizard-of-lies-the-handmaid-tpmd6pzf0



« Last Edit: June 04, 2017, 09:15:25 AM by patch »

Offline Clairette

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2017, 01:18:58 AM »
The author of the review, apparently, lives in a very pink and fluffy world. The story shown in 1 series is just as banal as it is terrible.
Beggars everywhere live the same way. I know such stories in fact, maybe not for three days, but the essence of it does not change. After the first shock, thought inevitably returns to money, because the whole life of a beggar is a search for means to live.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2017, 01:27:35 AM by Clairette »

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2017, 05:03:05 AM »
BROKEN? I was after the first half hour of Jimmy McGovern’s new drama of the same name (BBC1, Tuesday).
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The Liverpool-set series was postponed from last week, quite rightly so, as the relentless sadness of the drama would have been too much after the bombing in Manchester, but if you needed a reminder of how it feels to be human McGovern delivers it with both barrels.

Big, burly hard man Sean Bean plays Father Michael – no, wait, he’s fantastic as a tenderhearted character – trying to do his best for his hard-up parishioners. One of whom is Christina (Anna Friel) a skint, out of work, single mother. She lost her job after “borrowing” money from the till, then had a punch up with the manager and can’t claim benefits for 13 weeks.

Father Michael tries to help; he sees Christine can’t afford a fancy dress for her daughter’s first communion and tries to get the children to take it in their school uniforms.

He’s a good man, but has his own demons. Flashbacks to his childhood were utterly heartbreaking; a mother screaming “You dirty, filthy beast, have you got no ****** shame?” at the poor mite for reasons as yet unexplained; young Michael reciting a beautiful poem he’d written, only for his teacher to scream “WHO HELPED YOU?” and give him the tawse across his hand.

No wonder Michael is full of doubt. And now his mother is dying and needs him, as his hopeless brothers won’t share the load of her care.

 Deeply sad? Yes. Depressing? Yes. But McGovern’s very human dramas, with their beautiful detail, are a necessity in a television schedule full of flash types on reality shows.

Seeing Father Michael tucked up in bed, reflecting while he’s reading the Bible and listening to the Shipping Forecast; and, most powerfully, a long, silent, scene where Christine discovers her dead mother and caresses her face, were rare moments of stillness on the box and illustrate that McGovern isn’t afraid to show that into each life a little rain must fall. Even if in some cases, in his work, it’s a hurricane.

The use of music in Broken was exceptional, too. I was welling up at the use of Nina Simone’s version of Randy Newman’s bleak but beautiful I Think It’s Going To Rain Today at the beginning of the drama and was floored when Simone sang I Get Along Without You Very Well to accompany shots of Christine’s loneliness.

Broken is visceral viewing but, ultimately, it’s about the basic human values of love, duty and faith. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series, which hopefully includes more of Line Of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar as Father Michael’s confidante Father Peter.
 
http://www.cetusnews.com/views/Syl1J3uWz-?cat=life&title=TV-reviews%3A-Broken%2C-Divided-Britain-and-Frank-Skinner-on-Muhammad-Ali




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Broken is the latest drama by Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, The Street) — which could well be why it’s attracted two such starry leads. Neither of them, mind you, is required to demonstrate much starriness here. Sean Bean abandons his normal hunky ways to play a quietly spoken priest who manages to radiate goodness wherever he goes, despite obviously having Issues of His Own. Anna Friel does the traditional glamorous-actress-trying-hard-to-look-dowdy thing — rather well, in fact — as Christina, a woman whose bad luck is by no means limited to being a penniless orphan. 
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/06/the-handmaids-tale-is-a-liberal-fantasy-of-the-right/#



« Last Edit: June 04, 2017, 08:03:20 AM by patch »

Offline Rebecca

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2017, 06:04:41 PM »
REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

From Den of Geek's Broken episode 2 Review:

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A little of that was encouraged out of him this week by Roz, whose interest in Father Michael made them more equals than confessor and confessee. We learned that before becoming a priest, Michael treated women disrespectfully, using them for sex and mistreating them afterwards. The flashback scenes of him approaching a door behind which a woman is screaming appeared to show, perhaps, an abortion. Seeing as these scenes are playing out in his mind, were both the little boy and the young man smoking down the corridor Michael at different ages? Just as we saw his fifty-year old hand become that of a small child when holding his mother’s, are those flashbacks conflating various instances of shame in his past?

That kind of symbolism combined with the delicateness of Sean Bean’s performance, is what elevates Broken beyond a collection of (justifiably) angry political complaints. The image of Michael being called to the priesthood after his experience with the returning hawk was transcendent storytelling. It offered poetry, not just protest. You need the one in order to sell the other.

Yes, delicate and transcendent. I like this reviewer's writing, and I'm blown away by Broken.

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #11 on: June 07, 2017, 12:29:34 AM »
BBC criticised by some viewers for airing shooting in Sean Bean's religious drama Broken
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Some viewers of Sean Bean's new BBC drama Broken have reacted critically over violent scenes in the wake of the London terror attack – while others strongly defended the poignant episode.

In the new prestige drama, Sean's northern priest Michael Kerrigan encounters a range of troubled parishioners desperately reaching out for his guidance and support in their hours of need.

This week, Father Michael talked down a suicidal woman (Deadwood's Paula Malcomson) guilty of stealing Ł200,000 by sharing his own harrowing story of rededicating his life to helping others when he too once considered suicide years earlier.

The man of the cloth was later called to counsel a grieving mother after her bipolar son was tragically shot dead in a showdown with local police. Some viewers felt it was merely too soon to air the shooting after seven were killed in a terror strike this past weekend in London:
 
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a830166/sean-beans-religious-bbc-drama-broken-shooting-criticised-london-attack/

Offline Rebecca

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #12 on: June 07, 2017, 06:12:25 AM »
Wow, talk about fabricating a story out of thin material. He gave four supposed examples of people complaining.
One is: "So true it hurts #Broken @BBC."  That's a criticism?
Two more were by the same person. So really TWO people made negative comments in a virtual waterfall of praise and acclaim last night on Twitter. So much that there was a tweet something like, "When I saw Sean Bean was trending I almost had a heart attack. Thank you 2016." But I guess the writer thought negativity was better click-bait.

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #13 on: June 11, 2017, 01:19:20 AM »

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Despite standout performances from Anna Friel and Sean Bean, there is something of a one-perfume topnote to Broken: misery. That is not, necessarily, to detract from Jimmy McGovern’s tale of a sort-of-Manchester, focusing on the woes of a beleaguered northern priest, and the white lies he has to tell absolutely everybody, and the grey lines they write on his once-Sharpe face.

McGovern is too adept a writer to indulge himself in agitprop: only very occasionally, and perhaps rightly so, as in Father Michael’s railing against “four betting shops in the high street. No bank, no post office, no chemist…” do we feel we are in lefty hands. And he makes magnificent, true, points about cash-poverty, as opposed to not poverty-poverty. It starts with Nina Simone’s powerfully beautiful I Think It’s Going to Rain Today: the problem is that the rain never stops.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jun/11/the-week-in-tv-fargo-orange-is-the-new-black-broken-ackley-bridge-arena-american-epic#img-3



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The BBC’s other big drama series of the moment is Jimmy McGovern’s Broken (BBC1, Tuesdays). McGovern is television royalty, and rightly so: Hillsborough, The Street and Accused are among the finest British TV dramas ever made; Cracker, starring Robbie Coltrane as brilliant but deeply flawed psychologist Fitz, rewrote the rules for television thrillers and has influenced countless TV series, films and novels.
   

But Broken, starring Anna Friel as a destitute mother-of-three and Sean Bean as a Catholic priest haunted by his traumatic past, is unrelentingly grim and completely lacking the mordant humour of some of McGovern’s previous work.It’s like being battered over the head with a misery stick. Viewers who stick through all six episodes are likely to end up feeling as broken as the characters
 
http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/from-broken-to-paula-why-are-british-dramas-so-depressingly-awful-35807302.html




Great British Drama – Paula and Broken
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Two ‘flagship’ BBC dramas are currently playing out on Beeb TV. Paula on Beeb2, and Broken on Beeb1. Two gritty, contentious, substantial looks into life in “broke Britain”.

 Whilst Paula has finished (aww…) Broken is still going. A six part series about faith, diligence, and the degradation of society, with Father Sean Bean (Michael Kerrigan) helplessly and haplessly trying to guide his community through the valley of the shadow of failed promises and incompetent public services.

We’re up to episode three now, and, so far, we’ve been introduced to Christina Fitzsimmons (Anna Friel), who melodramatically loses her job by getting punched in the face, then hides her dead mother’s body so she can withdraw the pension and feed her three children. Ep two focuses more on Father Sean Bean who, in not picking up the phone after a long day listening to people’s woes, indirectly causes a psychotic son to be shot dead by police after holding a knife to his throat.

 say, ‘gritty contentious substantial looks into Britain’, and both series kinda are. Paula felt genuine, up to the end of the second episode, just before she starts firing a gun off in a restaurant. And Broken uses themes that pull at all the heart strings. Crisis of faith, trying to make it by, suicide. But both programmes kind of go askew a bit.

From the end of ep two onwards Paula falls into the realms of the bizarre, while Broken comes across just a touch ridiculous, with Friel walking around the streets of her community with tomato ketchup smudged over her top lip to make it look like blood, and the kid with the knife waving it around on the spot in his front gardening then getting shot down by police who are heavier armed then anti-terrorist units. Broken just feels a little squished. But it’s worth watching to see Father Sean Bean turn in a career best performance as the conflicted, tormented Father Sean Bean…

Put it this way, considering Paula’s finished and Broken’s still got someway to go (Tuesday nights, 9pm, Beeb One folks), I’d rather wait for my computer to warm up and click on iPlayer to watch Paula, than flick over the TV to watch Broken. But you could watch both… Two good attempts at holding attention spans.
http://vulturehound.co.uk/2017/06/great-british-drama-paula-and-broken/





« Last Edit: June 11, 2017, 07:30:21 AM by patch »

Offline Clairette

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #14 on: June 11, 2017, 08:53:53 AM »
Quote
completely lacking the mordant humour

What? The author watched the movie it?
The fight of Christina, "gypsy wedding", football, Michael's brothers, Chattanooga at last ...

Offline lab183

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #15 on: June 11, 2017, 03:02:13 PM »
*********************************THE BROKEN SERIES --------- SPOILERS ALERT***********************************************

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************






I think the critics are missing one of the major points of the show. Jimmy McGovern IMO seems to be making a major statement about the state of the world, not just the UK and not just about the Catholic Church. He's making a statement about power and control, as in who really has it? God? The government? The wealthy? Who? 

Why are all these people in such total misery? At first we think it has do mainly with poverty and we see Father Michael asking God to somehow intervene on Anna Friel's character's & Vernon's behalf. We get angry at the government's inability to see how its own insane bureaucracy and corruption are literally bringing people to their knees. Never mind asking God for help, he can't even get any cooperation or relief from his own parishioners who can't afford a Holy Communion dress but are willing to go into years of debt all in the name of honoring the same God.

The control theme is even more keenly felt in all the death stories. We learn that misery affects even the well off, Roz Demichelis (suicidal woman). We see Father Michael trying to exert control over her by making her promise to wait a few days before she offs herself. Father Micheal's Mum is dying & he's trying his best to control her death for the sake of his own personal issues in juxtaposition to how Anna Friel tried to control her own mother's death for the sake of her pension check. And lastly, all of the events that spiraled out of control that lead to Vernon's death.

To me, the show is very deep and thought provoking. It's not about God's control or the government's control. It's about control over ourselves. It's about the choices we make every day, how even the smallest of things can lead to much bigger things ...all the way up to our faith in God or the Universal power of your choice. People have the power to change things for themselves, but they are so trapped in their details of their daily lives that they can no longer see the big picture. Instead of looking for someone else to blame, people, (even priests) need to look within for their own power.

it will be very interesting to see how this all plays out...will people step up and take better control over themselves or not?
« Last Edit: June 11, 2017, 03:20:22 PM by lab183 »

Offline Clairette

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #16 on: June 12, 2017, 06:02:33 AM »
Very interesting, thank you. I would dispute, but my vocabulary will not allow

Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #17 on: June 14, 2017, 12:12:00 AM »
Sean Bean starts religious revolution on Broken as he demands a female pope



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Sean Bean's new BBC One series Broken may have sparked a religious revolution on Tuesday (June 13).

The latest drama from Cracker and Accused writer Jimmy McGovern shines a light on the suffering of a northern community as a lone priest (Sean Bean) tries to bring peace to his troubled parish.

Last week's episode drew some criticism in the wake of the London terror attack for centring half of its episode on the aftermath of police shooting an unarmed, mentally ill man.

 Broken followed along a similar theme tonight, as Father Michael counselled a young police officer being pressured by colleagues to corroborate their lies about the previously-mentioned shooting.

However, it was the priest's impassioned sermon about the Catholic Church and its attitudes towards women in the clergy that most resonated with viewers during the third episode.

"I think I understand why our church is so upset against women priests," Father Michael told his sparse parish. "I think it's the old men who run the church don't want to see menstrual blood on the alter. Fear of. Ignorance of. Contempt of the bodies of women.

"'Ah, it's alright', you might say, 'these old men will soon be dead'. But they've taught younger men. And those younger men will, in turn, teach younger men. And so it will continue, this 'fear of'. Ignorance of. Contempt for the bodies of women.

"Female priests. Female bishops. Female pope. That's what our church needs."

To that rallying speech, Twitter gave Sean Bean and Broken a very hearty 'hallelujah':

If he keeps up these powerful sermons, Father Michael may have Britain's biggest congregation by the time Broken ends its first series.

However, Father Michael risks violating his own clergy vows next week when he tries to make contact with the parishioner (Deadwood and Ray Donovan's Paula Malcomson) who he talked down from suicide earlier in the series.
Broken will continue next Tuesday (June 20) at 9pm on BBC One.
http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a830752/broken-sean-bean-episode-three-reactions-female-pope/


Broken episode 3 review
Broken continues with another sad story, but will audiences turn away from drama this bleak?

This review contains spoilers.
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Give me the child and I’ll give you the man, says an old Jesuit adage I’m paraphrasing and probably misattributing, but nonetheless the wisdom stands: what we learn in childhood forms us as adults. Of Broken’s many messages, that’s the loudest.

In childhood, Michael Kerrigan learned there was something wrong with him. He learned to keep quiet. He learned the sexual abuse he suffered was his fault. None of that’s exclusive to Catholicism – those are the lessons all abused children learn and they’re the fastest to sink in. Unlearning them can be the job of a lifetime.

It’s a job that Father Michael, now in his fifties, is still working on. As he struggles to support his bruised community and atone for his past wrongs, he’s also trying to make sense of the abuse he suffered. Why him? Why was it allowed to continue? And why didn’t he speak out about it? Episode three shows him still reeling from the trauma, and, in its most powerful scene, finally confronting his painfully indifferent abuser.

Father Michael’s story is Broken’s most affecting strand. Not because it’s the saddest—you can hardly rank these desperate stories by weight of wretchedness, they’re dreadful to a one—but because it has the most complexity. As a child, Sean Bean’s character suffered physical and sexual abuse by priests and then became a priest, a vocation in which he clearly believes. Michael was terribly wronged by the adults in his life, later went on to wrong others—women, and now lives a life of atonement. He gets angry. He can be selfish. He could have, but didn't, save a boy’s life for want of picking up the telephone. He struggles to square his anger and pain with his faith’s aspirations to forgiveness and mercy. Put simply, he’s not perfect.

Being not perfect (and being played by an actor able to convey all of the above as naturally as breathing) makes Father Michael compelling. Watching a complex character try to be good, it turns out, is just as captivating as watching one try on being bad—a route well-trodden in modern TV drama.

The complexity is key. Much less compelling than Father Michael’s is the story of Helen Oyenusi (Muna Otaru), whose saintly composure following the murder of her son doesn’t feel grounded in reality. She displays no anger, only gratitude and benevolence. She responds to platitudes from the police service that killed her son with humble thanks. Heartbroken, she doles out forgiveness rather than blame. Put simply, Helen is perfect, which makes her hard to believe in.

Broken has a habit of painting its supporting characters in primary colours that challenge credulity. In pursuit of Jimmy McGovern’s message of social responsibility, they’re either pure victims like Helen or pure villains like PC Andrew Powell’s commanding officer. The latter exists as an avatar for closed-ranks corruption in the police service, i.e. a baddie. That’s why he doesn’t only put pressure on Mark Stanley’s conflicted character, he also callously tramples over his infant daughter’s birthday party in the process.

That sort of manipulative touch weakens Broken’s argument. Even if McGovern’s perennial theme of social injustice is close to your own heart—and why on earth wouldn’t it be?—it risks overegging the pudding. For all this series' power, with no ironic edge or leavening comedy, Broken may prove too bleak and too earnest for some. Audiences are happy to be moved; they balk at being overburdened or patronised.

Audiences, however, always have time for terrific performances such as the one Mark Stanley (Dickensian, Game Of Thrones) gave as PC Andrew Powell, an officer wrestling with his conscience when his colleagues form a conspiracy to cover up misconduct in the killing of Helen’s son. Pulling focus from Sean Bean at his best is no small achievement, and Stanley did just that in the emotional church scene.

Drew’s story was another important tale about how challenging it can be to do the right thing. His final speech about the impossibility of being a coward with a conscience was moving and truthful. Like Father Michael, he was traumatised, not by historical events but by those of the recent past.

A drama you watch with a heavy heart, Broken is still at its best as an emotional biography of a man struggling to emerge from his past. “Do this in memory of me,” said Father Michael in mass, while suffering flashbacks to his childhood abuse, and it’s a cruel irony that he can't deliver the sacrament in memory of his saviour, only in memory of his abuser.
http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/broken/50063/broken-episode-3-review



« Last Edit: June 14, 2017, 04:10:17 AM by patch »

Offline Rebecca

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #18 on: June 14, 2017, 03:53:59 AM »

*SPOILERS*

Broken viewers left SPEECHLESS as Father Michael Kerrigan makes THIS shock confession

THOSE who have been tuning into BBC drama Broken over the past couple of weeks have watched as troubled Father Michael Kerrigan struggles with flashbacks of his childhood and tonight, they learned the extent of the abuse he suffered.

In a number of flashbacks scenes the priest could be seen as young boy at school where his teacher Father Matthew (played by Thomas Arnold) put his hands on his thigh while teaching and watched him in the shower after a PE class.

Finally enough was enough for Father Michael (Sean Bean) and he decided to confront the man who had left him feeling suicidal as a child.

He tracked down Father Matthew and was left fuming when he realised he didn't think he had done anything wrong and refused to apologise for his abuse.

Father Michael raged: "You used to put your hand on my thigh and move it up to my genitals."

"You call that abuse? You liked it. Not one single boy didn't like it," his former English teacher hit back.

Viewers at home were left heartbroken as they finally learned the truth about Father Michael's troubled childhood and took to Twitter to praise Jimmy McGovern's script.

"Wow, what an unbelievably powerful episode. Made me cry. Jimmy McGovern is a genius. #Broken," one fan tweeted.

While another added: "Sean Bean's finest performance to date in #Broken. This week's episode incredible tense emotional stuff in the closing scene."



Offline patch

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Re: "Broken" Reviews
« Reply #19 on: June 14, 2017, 09:33:21 AM »
A love letter to Sean Bean – the most heartbreakingly mesmerising of actors

He’s been the sexy heartthrob, the Game of Thrones favourite, and the man who dies best on screen. But it’s as a priest on BBC’s Broken that he has finally proved what he’s capable of – and it’s stunning



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Warning: this article contains spoilers from Broken on the BBC.

It sometimes seems as though Jimmy McGovern named his latest show Broken because his aim is to break his viewers into pieces every week. We are now halfway through this series about Catholic priest Father Michael Kerrigan and the small flock he attempts to bring succour to in the north west of England – and every week has ended with me blubbering incoherently on the sofa.


Now no one does anger and pain and misery quite like McGovern, and with Broken he has plumbed new depths of social despair – but what makes it not just bearable but utterly gripping to watch is his dark, dry humour and the magnificent performance of his leading man, Sean Bean.

Bean’s Father Michael is quiet and conflicted, haunted by his past and battling a sadness that has seeped deep into his soul. He commands the screen, his pain flitting across that gaunt, ravaged face reminding us that some of the best actors say most when speaking least.

Thus we watch transfixed as Father Michael acts almost more as social worker than priest, trying to solve problems that are beyond prayer. We cheer as he attempts to rally his sparse congregation with a controversial attack on the “old men” who run the Catholic church and their “contempt for the bodies of women”, and smile as he goofily sings his sick mother to sleep with a full-throated rendition of Glenn Miller’s Chattanooga Choo Choo.

Throughout it all Bean slowly, carefully builds up a portrait of a man who is both a part of this community and yet somehow apart from it, who gives freely of himself yet sits alone at the local bar, donning his sadness just as he puts on his chasuble for mass. As a study of loneliness it is thoughtful, subtle and ultimately mesmerising: a picture of a man on the verge of breakdown who is holding himself together through sheer faith and a desperate desire to atone.

It is not the most obvious of roles for Bean, now 58, who built a name for himself as a swashbuckler and sword-swinger, famous mostly for his many glorious on-screen deaths. He’s been shot, stabbed, pulled apart by horses, chased off a cliff by cows, thrown off a giant satellite dish, blown up, beheaded and turned into a human pin-cushion by Orc arrows.

Yet those deaths, and the memes and jokes they’ve inspired, have obscured Bean’s acting prowess. The man who played Sharpe, Boromir and Ned Stark with such swagger is Rada-trained and Royal Shakespeare Company-finished. After an early triumph as a British TV heartthrob playing Mellors in Ken Russell’s Lady Chatterley and steely rifleman Richard Sharpe – a role that stirred a generation’s loins – he built a Hollywood career out of playing villains. He sneered at Pierce Brosnan’s Bond in GoldenEye, shouted at Nicolas Cage in National Treasure and threatened Harrison Ford in Patriot Games. Lord of the Rings made him the doomed anti-hero, he was easily the best thing in the disastrous Troy, giving Odysseus guile, wit and that familiar, rough-edged charm, and he terrified TV viewers as property developer John Dawson in the dark and brilliant Red Riding.

It was Game of Thrones that cemented his reputation for dying well. Games of Thrones was also the show that reminded people that behind the menace lurked an actor of great subtlety. His Ned Stark was both weary commander and good man fatally out of his depth; a lesser actor might have struggled to sell the often naive decisions that sealed Ned’s fate, but Bean’s authority and ability to say more with one frustrated look than a thousand speeches is what kept fans rooting for him to the bitter end.

 More recently he has switched between action-led TV dramas (Missing, Legends and The Frankenstein Chronicles) and darker fare, most notably cross-dressing teacher Simon Gaskell in McGovern’s earlier drama, Accused (a role he won an International Emmy for). In 2016 he popped up in the E4 comedy Wasted poking fun at himself by serving as a spirit guide to a bunch of stoners.

Yet this performance as Father Michael is something else again: interior, considered, filled with emotional heft. In this week’s episode, Michael finally confronted the priest whose actions destroyed his childhood and have hung heavy over his life. In a lesser drama, there would have been something cathartic in that moment. Instead, McGovern and Bean played it low-key and true as Michael pushed for answers only to find that his abuser simply didn’t care. It was a moment made all the more devastating by Bean’s quiet rage and the gut-wrenching brokenness at its core.

There are few actors capable of bringing that weight to a role. Of allowing you to see how a person can be both good but heartbreakingly, perhaps fatally, flawed. Of convincing you that a man so betrayed by the Catholic church as a child might return to that church thanks to a faith deeper than those betrayals and, crucially, of making you believe in every aspect of his character’s life from the good-natured interventions into his parishioners’ lives to those moments when, terribly, he ignores them out of a desire to be off-duty for once, to put down the candle, to be alone.

McGovern has noted that he never considered anyone else for the role: “I always go back to Sean – I just think he’s world class,” he said. “People know he’s good, but I know he’s great.” And, thanks to Broken, we all do now.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jun/14/sean-bean-mesmerising-actor-game-of-thrones-broken#img-1







« Last Edit: June 14, 2017, 11:26:36 PM by patch »