The atmosphere on the set of a TV show often doesn’t reflect the content at all.
Take Time, for example, writer Jimmy McGovern’s superb if unflinching examination of the British prison system.
The first series was set in a men’s jail and the second in a women’s prison. The third stars David Tennant as Bailey, a jaded officer at a Young Offenders Institution (YOI) who finds his personal life is about to blow up when his wife leaves him and whose professional life is in no better shape after violence erupts at work.
Alongside Bailey is Siobhan Finneran’s prison chaplain Marie-Louise – the common factor in all three series, alongside Jimmy – and an amazing cast of young men playing inmates of fictional HMP Alderwick.
And yet there is much laughter when I visit the set just outside Belfast. We are in the striplit corridors of a disused school in Downpatrick, doubling with grim persuasiveness as various prison locations. The cast have also filmed in Crumlin Road Gaol – formerly HMP Belfast – and HMP Hydebank Wood, an active young offenders centre in south Belfast.
The younger cast have been out exploring Belfast under the guidance of relative veteran and local lad Louis McCartney – a Tony nominee for Stranger Things: The First Shadow – and enjoying late-night card games, while Siobhan has been hunting for bars that serve Guinness, to manage her (mostly feigned) resentment at her Death In Paradise star partner Don Gilet’s annual jaunt to Guadeloupe to film the hit BBC detective series.
‘It’s a lovely job but those boys are heartbreaking,’ she says. ‘Marie-Louise sees them as children, because that’s effectively what they are. She sees beyond their anger and aggression to support them, I love that about her.
‘For a lot of these young actors, it’s their first job, so they’ve got that fabulous zest. I’m like, “What time is lunch?”’
Jimmy, the creative force behind the drama, ‘makes his point without campaigning’, says David. ‘He’s telling stories, and anything that helps us understand another person’s experiences, walk in another person’s shoes, is immensely valuable, especially when it’s told from a place we don’t often think to look.’
Like its predecessors, season three deals in human frailty and fallibility, courage and faith: how to live with consequences of a bad decision that takes one life and permanently derails another. The young offenders are subject to keep-aparts – where kids from a certain postcode can’t mix with those from another – and 23-hour bang-ups.
In the middle of this powder keg is Louis as James Hennessy, inside for a seemingly unforgivable crime, alongside newcomers Chukwubuikem Molokwu (Christopher, a stammerer reconnecting with his estranged mother), Victor Zhao (Jietang, imprisoned after an altercation with diners at his dad’s restaurant), and Ollie McNulty (Peter, party to a fatal stabbing).
‘The readthrough was a bit scary,’ says Ollie, ‘but we knew we were all going through it and it was OK to not know everything – Siobhan and David answered all our questions, so it just flowed and we were soaking up as much as possible. I can’t believe how upsetting it is to watch, because of how much fun we had in between.’
Peter’s story is typical of Time’s moral dilemmas, says Ollie. ‘He’s been abandoned by his parents and raised by his auntie, but Peter ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wants to tell the truth about what happened because he can see a future with his girlfriend and their son, but he’s trapped by loyalty to his family.’
For Victor, Jietang’s story is weirdly familiar. ‘As a Chinese Scouser whose dad owns a restaurant, I was born to play him,’ he says.
‘I’ve been in the street life, I went to prison when I was 18 for a motorbike offence. ‘A YOI is like a zoo, everyone’s trying to prove themselves, so treat people the way you want to be treated. Be humble, don’t go looking for problems but don’t take any grief, either. But my experiences made me the man I am today and this job… it’s a dream.’
Jimmy’s track record ensured he was trusted by both officers and inmates during a rigorous research process of YOI visits, when he was struck by the potential for violence, reasons behind it and how to steer the prisoners towards something more constructive. ‘These are young people, full of energy, who can’t get out of their cells,’ he says. ‘But all of them have got things to offer. Train them, teach them.’
It’s something, says David, that Bailey feels keenly. ‘The job he was once more enthusiastic about has become very compromised and nowadays there’s just not enough staff, not enough opportunity.
‘I was very impressed by the prison officers I spoke to. They try to do the job correctly and affect change to make life easier and prison a better place to be. But the real engine of this story is these young men, so full of potential, being bottled and constrained and railing against what they might be missing out on.
‘Time has made me consider what reality means to anybody within that system, on either side of the locked door. We’re all trying our best and we all make mistakes.’
Time series three starts on Sunday, on BBC iPlayer and at 9pm on BBC One.