*Episode premise spoilers.*
Looks like I was right that characters who are featured in an episode of The Street get seeded into the preceding episode. Matt Smith/Ian Hanley is a major player here, although I wouldn’t necessarily call him the clear lead of the story. And it turns out that quite a few of the characters in this episode appeared briefly in “Demolition”—I just didn’t realize it because Smith was the only actor I was looking out for. I’m guessing they were probably there with Smith in the background of a pub scene. Anyway, here’s the episode.
The Hanleys are doing their best to keep everything going while their dad awaits trial on drug charges. But oldest son Ian gets into trouble when he and his cousin Gary have a night out—Gary winds up battering a taxi driver in a drunken rage, but Ian is the one left holding the bag. With Ian in custody, his mom tries to believe in his innocence while Gary’s mom tries to make sure her son doesn’t have to pay for what he did.
It's an interesting story. Like “Demolition,” it’s fairly heavy-handed, but in a different way. I like seeing how this one horrible decision and one lie cause so much havoc for two families. Gary is supposed to be joining the military in a couple weeks—if the truth gets out, his future is over, but Ian is terrified that if Gary leaves for training, he’ll be left to go down for a crime he didn’t commit. Gary’s mom will do whatever she can to protect his secret, and Ian is merely a function of that. If getting him off assures that Gary won’t have to come clean, she’ll do what she can to get him the best lawyer, but if he endangers Gary’s freedom, she has no use for him. Ian’s mom was already struggling with her husband in jail, so Ian’s troubles nearly break her. She wants to believe he’s not capable of hurting someone so badly, but as the police investigate, she isn’t sure what to believe anymore.
A couple familiar faces in the cast today. I couldn’t recall where I’d seen Lorraine Ashbourne, who plays Ian’s mom, but IMDb tells me she played Mrs. Fairfax in the Ruth Wilson/Toby Stephens Jane Eyre. And Gina McKee, who plays Gary’s mom, was in In the Loop with Peter Capaldi (wonder if she’s acted opposite any other Doctors?)
Even though the story revolves around Ian, he’s more of its object than its subject. The episode is at least as much about his mom, Gary, and Gary’s mom as it is about him. So there’s not as much screentime for Smith as I would’ve expected, but he does a nice job with it. Ian is a pretty basic lad who’s been thrown into an enormously difficult situation. Throughout much of the story, you get a sense that he doesn’t quite know how to respond because he can’t fully believe this is happening to him. He can’t believe that one night out could’ve gone so wrong, he can’t believe he got nicked for something he didn’t do, and he can’t believe that, for all of Gary’s promises to stand by him, his cousin might actually leave him twisting in the wind.
As such, Smith’s performance is frequently bewildered, agitated, and defensive. Ian is reaching for anything that might even look like a lifeline. He knows his story (which he’s amended to leave out Gary) sounds flimsy, but it’s all he has so he’s clinging to it as tightly as he can.
Accent Watch
Northern.
Recommend?
In General – As I said before, a soft maybe. It’s interesting but doesn’t pull me in all the way.
Matt Smith – Maybe. Even if Ian is less of a protagonist in this episode than I expected, Smith turns in a solid performance. Not to mention, he was so young when he started on Who that his pre-Doctor performances are always intriguing to me.
Warnings
Violence, language, drinking/smoking/drug references, and thematic elements.
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