A confronting family drama of the repercussions of childhood abuse both sexual and emotional, The Virtues is a devastatingly powerful four-part miniseries.
Writer/director Shane Meadows is a renowned social storyteller (This Is England, Twenty Four Seven) and in The Virtues we see a distraught Joseph (an extraordinary Stephen Graham) desperately try to hold on to a sense of normality as his nine-year-old son leaves for Australia with his new family. He fails. An alcoholic on the wagon, Joseph reverts to old ways. In an attempt to distance himself, he boards a boat for an Ireland he left 25 years earlier to confront painful memories from his childhood and find some kind of closure.
Those memories come crashing back as Joseph is reunited with an incredulous Anna (Helen Behan), his younger sister. But rediscovering his family comes at a price as the traumas of abuse at the orphanage rear their head. And his new-to-him sister-in-law Dinah (an impressive Niamh Algar) has her own demons to contend with.
A visceral The Virtues is not always easy viewing. And, as Joseph’s flashbacks to time in the home become more and more frequent, a sense of menace of tragic inevitability increases. Dinah’s more recent story is equally bitter and sad. Yet, with co-writer Jack Thorne, Meadows teases out every ounce of humanity and occasional humour from its narrative of family and the human spirit.
Rating: 80%
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