STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
SERIES ONE
Manny (Babou Ceesay) and Sam (Jill Halfpenny) welcome their teenage son, Isaac (Max Fincham) back from the States, where he has just had a major role in a big budget sci-fi thriller. However, his success has come at a terrible price, when he produces mobile phone footage, that contains an audio recording of him being sexually abused by one of the film's producers. Facing insurmountable obstacles suing a rich, powerful man in the States, they accept some hush money, a decision which sends them spiralling down into a destructive cycle of despair and retribution.
The BBC, in recent years, has become a hotbed for former stars from years back becoming the subject of sexual abuse scandals, in the wake of the revelations about Jimmy Savile. But, as if by some terrible coincidence, now Hollywood, the dominant film industry over the pond, has started to produce its own checklist of high profile sexual abusers. Dark Money serves, in some definition, as a perverse amalgamation of these two dark worlds, in an effective drama that gets beneath the skin.
Strong performances all round guide the weighty material along, in a pretty 'woke' cast, the most admiration of which has to go to the young Fincham, as the violated young man, whose mistreatment results in him transforming into an aggressive, not always likeable young bloke, who still manages to endear us to him in the end. But powerful, sturdy support from Ceesay and Halfpenny as the devastated mixed race parents is an essential part of what makes the whole thing flow like clockwork.
Here, reflecting their own modern turmoil, the beeb have produced an ambitious, searing, unconventional, but highly rewarding piece of work. ****
