Time review: lives of drug addict teen, in-over-her-head mother and a child killer make for riveting prison drama

Grittiness is the stock-in-trade of writer Jimmy McGovern and he serves it by the bucketful in season two of Time (BBC One, Sunday, 9pm). McGovern introduces us to three women incarcerated for crimes of wildly differing severity and forced to share a cell. It’s a prison drama but very different from the pulpy escapism of favourites of the genre, such as The Shawshank Redemption and Prison Break.

Series one of Time starred Sean Bean and Stephen Graham as men caught up in the horrors of the British prison system. Here was a hellscape that corroded all who came in touch with it, whether behind bars or not.

Returning two years on, McGovern tracks the experiences of drug addict teen Kelsey (Bella Ramsey from the Last Of Us), in-over-her-head mother Orla (Jodie Whittaker) and lifer Abi (Tamara Lawrance), whose background is by far the most complicated of the three.

Whether exploring the injustices that followed the Hillsborough disaster or taking a flensing look at the UK education system, McGovern has a singular ability to turn invariably depressing subjects into riveting drama. That talent endures with Time. He has us immediately hooked as we see Orla arrested for “fiddling” with her electricity supply (to save on bills) and wondering who will pick her kids up after school.

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The kitchen-sink misery is served by the gallon. But former Doctor Who Whittaker is brilliant as a mum who wants the best for her kids (in particular, to spare them from her alcoholic mother). Ramsey is a revelation, meanwhile, as a methadone user who becomes pregnant. Ramsey was searing in The Last Of Us as a survivor of the zombie apocalypse. In Time, the actor brings nuance to the part of a gobby teen who greets life with a two-fingered salute.

Having a child can be used to a prisoner’s advantage, Kelsey explains to her astonished boyfriend. Judges go softer on mums-to-be: she’ll be out after three years. But that cynicism is undermined by Ramsey, who takes the cliche of a snotty adolescent and makes the character human. As Abi, Tamara Lawrance is just as impressive. Abi has committed infanticide – the ultimate unimaginable evil. In flashbacks, we follow, rung by rung, her descent into depression.

Bean and Graham have moved on. Siobhan Finneran is back, however, as a sympathetic prison chaplain. As with the rest of the cast, she dives with gusto into McGovern’s script, which takes what could have been a trip down misery avenue and transform it into fascinating television.