The Virtues review, episode 3: Taut, tense and at times quite terrifying

The Shane Meadows drama is constantly on the verge of some fresh emotional trauma, which makes for compelling viewing

Alcoholism, child abuse, teenage pregnancy – The Virtues (Channel 4) should frankly be repulsive to watch. But the gift of all those involved is to make such a story compelling and to induce great compassion in the viewer.

Especially for Stephen Graham, as central figure Joseph, who has now burped his way through three episodes of this challenging drama. If there was a Bafta for belching it would surely go to Graham for creating such a perfect symbol of the indignity and self-loathing of the chronic alcoholic. For this is what Graham’s troubled character Joseph precisely is. A man who knows “I shouldn’t drink” but can’t stop. In fact, Graham deserves a real Bafta for an outstanding performance in what is, in all honesty, a pretty harrowing tale.

Over the past few episodes, told through his own halting reminiscences to others, and intermittent flashbacky nightmarish sequences, appropriately played out as if they were 1990s VHS home movies, we are gradually discovering the sad, sad roots of who and what Joseph is, and why he is so prone to getting blotto.

Orphaned at about eight years old in Ireland, he is separated from his sister, Anna (Niamh Algar), and packed off to what we assume is one of those boy’s homes run by the church (the Catholic one, of course), and notorious for all manner of child abuse. Joseph runs away – the reason as yet unclear but we can guess at it – and eventually gets adopted by his aunt and grows up in Liverpool. When his son, his ex-partner and her new boyfriend tell him that they are emigrating to Australia, he takes it badly, hits the bottle and resolves to leave his old life behind and go and find his long-lost sister, back in Ireland.

And so now we see Joseph turn up on Anna’s doorstep. Or rather, on the grass verge opposite Anna’s home, where she discovers him when taking the kids to school. She hasn’t seen him in nearly 40 years and at first she and her husband are wary, to say the least, of this odd little fellow with a Scouse accent, who insists that he knows her. Anna eventually accepts him and basically adopts him, becoming a sort of surrogate mum. Her husband Michael warms to him too and gives him some work on a building site.

Then it all goes wrong. Joseph is a man on a mission, but neither he nor we are sure of what it is or whether it is really wise. Is he trying to escape from his demons or confront them? On the pretext of popping into the village for a takeaway, he revisits the now abandoned Victorian institution he was interred in, breaking in and prowling the corridors. Through mock archive footage, we see him explore the dank corridors intercut with glimpses of the past, his arrival as a child, an older boy blowing a kiss at him, the carers/priests looking predatory, the police car that brings him back after his escape attempt.

It is echoed in the present day. On the building site he meets Craigy (Mark O’Halloran), who claims that he remembers Joseph from the boy’s home. O’Halloran plays Craigy with a remarkable degree of shiftiness. We know that he has been found guilty of indecent exposure, but his claims, and those of Michael, that it was “only to an old couple taking their dog for a walk”, with the unprompted addition that “it wasn’t kids” and that he is “not a paedo”. It sounds too forced and shady to be absolutely believable.

Craigy pushes Joseph a bit too far with the “shoulder to cry on” routine and insistent questions about the home, and, far from wanting to open up and face up to their shared past, Joseph tells him in brutal terms to “stop getting into my head”: “Was you f***ing bummed or something? ... Did a priest suck your cock?” In fairness, it’s the question that the viewer wants the answer to – but not just about Craigy but about Joseph too. Does he remember? Does he want to remember, really?

We see Joseph, after yet another drunken episode, getting inappropriate with Michael’s sister Dinah, telling her “you’ve got youth club tits” before they get intimate. She, we now learn, is what Anna calls “a hot mess”, and, maybe inspired by Joseph’s story, Dinah now wants to meet the baby boy she gave up for adoption when she was aged 15.

Written by Shane Meadows (who also directs) and Jack Thorne, here reunited with other members of the This is England team, The Virtues is taut, tense and at times quite terrifying. The drama itself is permanently on the verge of some fresh emotional trauma, present or remembered. Nothing settled – home, family, life. We really feel for all of them, despite how disturbing it is to watch – a considerable creative achievement.