Dark Money review: Speaks eloquently about the abuse of children by the powerful

When a child actor is awarded damages after being molested by a film producer, the family is torn apart by the payout

The Mensahs of Dark Money (BBC1) are a working class, not especially prosperous, London family who happen to have a brilliant acting talent in youngest son, Isaac (Max Fincham), who is about 11 years old. We meet him returning from his spell in Hollywood filming a major Star Wars-type science fiction movie, being feted by friends, family and schoolmates. He is a big little celebrity, his face already well-known through the film’s pre-publicity trailers and the like. His doting granny and aunties want to smother “my prince” in love and praise. He brings his oh-so-proud father Emmanuel, known as Manny (Babou Ceesay), a screenplay signed by all the stars; his mum Sam (Jill Halfpenny) glows with quiet pride.

And yet… Isaac seems withdrawn, reluctant to discuss his adventures on the film set with all the A-list celebrities. He rows with his sister Jess (Olive Gray) when she playfully presses him about whether he got off with anyone.

We soon discover why Isaac is as unhappy as he should be happy. He’s been molested by the film’s director Jotham Starr (John Schwab). This we know because Issac soon shows them his smartphone recording of what happened, with the phone pointing at the ceiling but the sound of a sexual assault clearly audible and unmistakable. (Why Isaac had the smartphone on record before the film producer arrived at Isaac’s room remains unexplained however.)

You would think that was all the evidence that would be needed to secure justice. In all the real-world cases we hear about, it is just the word of one frightened child pitted against that of a billionaire star backed up by a team of crack lawyers, ready to humiliate and undermine anyone on the wrong side of their client. Yet when Manny and Sam do ask a solicitor what they can do about this attack on their boy, they are given little hope. The lawyer tells them that the British authorities have no jurisdiction anyway, and they’d get nowhere through the America legal system.

I do wonder, though, whether a lawyer with a bit more of what Boris Johnson calls “positive energy” might have advised the Mensahs that he’d try and get them a US no-win-no-fee team on the case, given that the damages would be astronomical. Surely the reputational prestige for a successful action by an ambitious law firm against a major Hollywood name would be incentive enough for litigation. Also, I thought UK law now covered offences committed outside Britain – such as some notorious ones in Thailand. Plus, they have that recording. But he doesn’t guide them properly, which is a little unconvincing, as is a slightly wooden bit of explicatory dialogue Halfpenny does her best with about the difference between criminal and civil proceedings. Legally unsound, some of that I fear.

Of course, although Isaac traveled alone, he had a chaperone in America, Cheryl Denon (played superbly by Rebecca Front), who is responsible for his personal safety and turns out to be quite incompetent.

Even so, and with the overwhelming evidence of the video on hand, she and the family manage to get some $3m out of Starr’s hard-nosed lawyers – and the family cash the cheque, and we see the Mensahs settling into some gigantic house with a swimming pool. This, I think, is where writer Levi David Addai gets it right. The facile, and frankly tedious, thing to do would be to have the Mensahs indignantly throw the money back and defiantly go on some against-the-odds quest for justice. But they don’t, because we see how hard up they are, and how hopeless the legal situation is. Indeed, this is exactly what has happened in some real high-profile cases over the years.

And yet, we also see how the acceptance of the settlement – complete with a Non-Disclosure Agreement – is starting to tear the family apart, because it doesn’t represent justice, retribution or closure in the end. Manny virtually severs his fingers gripping a kitchen knife as he externalises his internal guilt and anguish, an affecting scene.

We also know that, contrary to his legal undertakings, Manny has (unbeknownst to anyone else) been talking to a journalist (Rudi Dharmalingam) about the story. Manny has drawn back from wanting to make it public, but the journalist is pursuing him, and has enough detail, in any event, to be able to name the filmmaker/child abuser.

There are clunky bits of conversation, and some holes in the plot, but the freshness of the storyline, introducing as it does, multiple points of tension, keeps the viewer interested. We care sufficiently about the family, and particularly Isaac (played with fine understatement by Fincham) and already dislike Starr so much that we want to see that justice done – but not at the cost of the destruction of their family life. Without the same heavily traumatic treatment as, say, Channel 4’s recent The Virtues, it still speaks eloquently about the abuse of children by the powerful, how persistent the phenomenon is and how uneven the balance of power between abuser and abused is – and will probably always be, given that so much of it is about money.