About Time
Time is a raw, unflinching prison drama from writer Jimmy McGovern that strips away every easy comfort and forces its characters to live with consequence. It opens on Mark Cobden, a teacher and family man who killed a stranger in a moment of drunken catastrophe and now arrives at a brutal Category B prison to begin his sentence. From the gates inward, the series studies what incarceration actually does to a person who knows, beyond doubt, that he deserves to be there.
Running parallel is the quieter agony of Eric McNally, a decent, by-the-book prison officer who is cornered when a powerful inmate discovers that Eric's son is locked up in another jail. To keep the boy safe, Eric is pressured into smuggling and small betrayals that gnaw at the very integrity that defined him. The two storylines never preach; they simply let pressure build until something has to give. A second series later shifts its gaze to women behind bars, finding fresh tragedy and grace in a different wing of the same broken system.
Anchored by two of Britain's finest actors, Time turns confinement into a study of guilt, mercy and the thin line between order and chaos. Sean Bean delivers a hollowed, haunted performance as Mark Cobden, while Stephen Graham gives Eric McNally a wrenching, slow-burning desperation that lingers long after the credits.
