User reviews

I actually disagree with some of the other reviewers as I in my opinion this was a great piece of writing by Jimmy McGovern. It dealt with a lot of very relevant issues in today's society and reduced me to tears at the end. It was very gritty, heartfelt and highlighted some of our human dilemmas really well. The acting was also superb Sean Bean played the priest so convincingly and all the other characters were so good too. A very enjoyable piece of work, thought provoking and poignant. My husband and I loved it and hope they will make another series.

I recorded this and forgot it for a few months. To be honest I was not expecting much. I recorded it because I find Anna Freil beautiful and she gets better with age. Having been born in a mining town and lived in the North of England all my life I always admire British dramas that 'tell it like it is'. What we have in the UK now is two separate countries and I have lived in both. One is the affluent UK where nobody dares to stray north and lives in a recession free capsule calling the working class lazy and continue to make use of cheap foreign labour to get their cars cleaned and their nails manicured. Then the other UK is what you see in this series. A UK where surviving is a battle as the state keep introducing penalties to drive you deeper into debt and to live on charity. A UK full of loan sharks, predators and pay day loan companies that are allowed to charge eye watering rates of interest. In one generation 'Nu Labour' & the tories have deskilled the British workforce and made us totally reliant on foreign labour. This series perfectly encapsulates both the physical and mental battles that challenge those at the bottom. The frightening thing is now the disabled, mentally ill and other needy sections of society are now being targeted and still the middle classes cheer on this destruction. I worked overseas for many years and did not recognise the place of my birth on my return. Sean Bean has always played good roles and should have had a lot more opportunities in film and TV. His portrayal of a man racked with guilt and shame perfectly reflects what a friend of mine went through when they were abused. There are beacons of hope throughout the series and allude to a once great community spirit where everybody once looked out for each other and helped each other, but as the series demonstrates these are now just glimpses in an industrial wasteland deliberately destroyed in the 80's. This kind of drama is what the UK does best and sits nicely with the likes of Boys from the Blackstuff, Kes & I, Daniel Blake.

I'm gonna be honest and shallow here. Then get deeper. Shallow bit. I started watching this, because Anna Friel was in it, and I fancy the pants off her. Always have. Always will. Even when she plays a hopeless down and out mother of three kids. The lack of a father figure doesn't belittle her situation, whatever some critics say. Deeper bit. This drama just gets better and better with every episode. It really shouldn't matter what your creed or colour or politics are, this drama encapsulates all that is so troubled with humanity right now, with right and wrong, justice and injustice, fairness and unfairness, and political correctness. I'm not anymore a Christian, far less a Catholic. But that doesn't mean that I don't respect those views. In his role, Sean Bean, IMHO, portrays our human and humane struggles to perfection, irrespective of our religious beliefs. And if you disagree, that is because you are religiously or politically biased. IMHO. # Tolerance

Broken was a gutsy series. It dramatised big themes—conscience, guilt, shame—and, with powerful writing and performances, told big stories about the Church, poverty and abuse. It's made for bitter viewing at times but even at its toughest, there's been a lit candle glowing determinedly at its centre.

Amen, Father Michael, you wonderful priest. And amen, Sean Bean, you wonderful actor.

This drama is amazing- the writing, the actors,the story line and interweaving of the the theme in the Communion and in the characters lives. So many dramas on T V lack originality and passion but this has both in full measure. It is intense and completely engaging.. The writing is exquisite and the theme music complements the script beautifully.

Sean Bean inhabits the character of the priest- his humanity and spirituality encourages a desire to reconnect with faith at its most meaningful level. He portrays a tortured but beautiful soul. He deserves an accolade for this part along with Jimmy MGovern- one of, if not the best writer and social commentators of our time.

Firstly I'd just like to start by thanking Jimmy MGovern, for giving us this drama, six parts of compulsive viewing, each episode gives a scarily realistic snapshot of real life. We get cover ups, gambling debts, fraud, bitterness, love and hope. I loved the format, six different episodes, with parallel stories running all the way. Gritty, realistic and heartbreaking, you are attached to every single character and their everyday battles.

Every single episode had me gripped, but I must give a special mention to Episode 2, Andrew, not since Line of Duty have I sat glued to my seat for sixty minutes captivated by what was in front of me. Mark Stanley stood out, but the entire cast were mesmerising. Drama doesn't come much better.

I've always been a massive fan of Sean Bean, I just don't think I'd realised he was THIS good, let's be honest, he was a revelation in this, and if awards don't follow I'll be majorly surprised.

I can find no faults whatsoever, I just wanted more.

Arguably the drama series of 2017. Series 2 has to follow.

10/10.

I'm a Protestant Evangelical Pastor and was quite simply gripped by the reality of the pain and emotion woven through this series; from a pastoral perspective it was a master-piece, challenging to any man seeking to serve God..... could hardly watch the final episode at times and that final scene had in me tears

It is not often a drama grips me to the point of tears. Sean Bean, what an actor! When I heard he was playing a priest in this series I thought "What!?!?". Well he was sensitive and humble, really drawing me me into the character and story. You got to know Father Kerrigan as a whole person, his insecurities, his doubts and his vulnerabilities were all visible in Bean's performance. On the close of the final episode I was in tears.

I do not make a point of staying in to watch a series, mainly because you can catch up with on demand services. With this one I wanted to see it as soon as possible. Which meant I was there on the dot of 9pm eagerly awaiting the start of the next episode.

I do hope producers and directors will take note and cast Sean Bean in these meatier roles.

This series is heavy. Like REALLY heavy. I'm not an oversensitive person, but I just can't binge watch this one. Need a week for cooldown after each episode. The acting and directing is phenomenal. Get yourself ready for some quality television, but it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Who'd be a priest then? Even the most devout one I think would probably not want to fill Sean Bean's character's shoes in this 6-part Jimmy McGovern BBC drama set in Sheffield. In short order he has to contend with a poverty-stricken single mother concealing the death-by-natural-causes of her mother in her own house, the death at the hands of a police marksman of a mentally disturbed young West Indian man contentiously allowed back into the community at the boy's mother's house, a suicidal middle-aged mother of three who's embezzled from her employer to feed her gaming machine habit and a dispute between a devoutly Christian, heterosexual, black Caribbean man and a hermetic, homosexual man.

Plus, priest Bean has his own problems. It wouldn't be a drama about the clergy of course without child sexual abuse and so Bean is tortured by memories of his own childhood and assault by a predatory priest at a young age, plus he has an elderly bed-ridden mother whom he and his sister take turns to sit with through the night. It seems that he can't get through the regular service of the sacrament without having a tortuous flashback about his youthful agonies which later turned him into a hard-drinking, womanising young man before his conscience drove him to the priesthood.

His interaction and, crucially as regards the police killing of the young boy, inaction links all six episodes, testing to the limit his own faith and vocation as he struggles to stay impartial and true to the doctrine of his church. His safety valves are his regular conflabs with a senior colleague played by Adrian Dunbar and his socialising with three old chums invariably down the pub, but the death of his mother in the last episode heightens his torment and leads up to the climactic scenes where we learn whether this ostensibly good man is broken or not by all that happens on his watch.

As you can imagine it's not laugh-a-minute stuff and the unremitting heaviness of the depicted events can seem overbearing at times. Not all the stories work well, especially the argument between the unforgiving older son of the mother of the police victim and her well-meaning gay neighbour, but in the two main stories of the suicide and the attempted police cover-up over the shooting of the boy, the writing is taut and credible. One might argue that the uplifting ending goes against the prevalent mood of unremitting bleakness in the community portrayed over the six episodes, but if any man deserved a break, it's Bean's hard-pressed priest.

Bean is excellent in the main role, cast against type while there is strong support from Paula Malcolmson as the suicidal woman, Mark Stanley as the conscience-stricken policeman and Muna Otara as the dead boy's mother. Even Anna Friel impresses as the down-pressed mother in the introductory episode, reduced to fraudulently encashing her newly deceased mum's pension to avoid the breadline. I've no religious faith of my own so the constant reiteration of the sacramental service seemed a bit overdone to me and like I said, if it wasn't for bad luck poor Bean would have no luck at all, but in the main, this was a rewarding if sometimes gruelling watch I was glad not only to have watched but to have got through to the end.

Not a Catholic, but that matters not a whit. Everything in this series is just so absorbing that its direct spirituality (Catholicism) is, because of it, surprisingly inclusive: there is something for everyone. So impressed with Jimmy McGovern, the writing, the acting, and I assume all others who had a hand in this finished work. A BBC keeper.

I've never been a fan of Sean Bean but his performance in this series is flawless. He is absolutely believable in the role of a catholic priest in an economically depressed northern town, supporting his congregation as they deal with the grim realities of life while struggling with his own life, faith and inner demons.

Each episode picks up the story of one of his congregation and the acting, plot lines and scripts are all universally excellent. It's such a great series I recommend it to everyone

I've seen all the episodes within two days. Exceptional performance, scenario and scenes. Highly recommended.

Full disclosure: I am biased to this because I am catholic.

Sean Bean, the first picture that comes to our mind when we take his name is Ned Stark in GoT, but he plays the role of a Priest to absolute perfection in this. The trials and travails of the people of his parish, is melancholy in hyperbole. Some of it is guaranteed to bring you to shed a tear. Enough characters and drama enough to keep you hooked from episode 2. The story which is obviously fiction has every reason to have actually played out in real, being played out somewhere out there even. Somehow this reminds me of Breaking Bad, dunno why. It's worth your while to give this go among the Homelands and Walking Dead's, for me its up there with the best so far, hope the rest of it (episodes) doesn't disappoint.

This is not a perfect series; it all adds up in the end, but each episode is devoted to a different character and plot line, and some of those slip in to following episodes. The playing of the priest by Sean Bean is as natural a performance that you will see anywhere. Bean plays a maverick of a priest with unconventional approaches and attitudes to religion and a very chatty way of delivering the sermon and the mass. This is a priest, though, with a past; a past of the ordinary red blooded male who becomes a priest after he has sewn his wild oats and he questions the faith and whether he is fit enough to even be a priest. His demons attack him every time he performs the Eucharist - if perform is the right word - and images from his past flood through his mind every time he takes the piece of bread before he turns it into Christ. The first episode tells you what the whole series is about when a character is found 'borrowing money' from the till of her employer just to feed her kids. Then we have a scene at the Social Security office, after she is fired, which we have seen in films by Ken Loach and Tony Garnet but we go a little further in this story. The performances are generally excellent and played for realism but everything seemed to be blamed on the southerners. Apart from a black family from the West Indies all the cast were 'northerners' but why did they have to have the big bad bully of a bookie who makes all the money from his slot machines played by a 'southerner' - a cockney? It's as if everything is blamed on the south east of the country - the priest says this in one of his sermons in the final episode - and sometimes the script takes a heavy hammer to the subject when a more subtle approach might have been more acceptable; I mean I've seen tally men in Manchester fleecing the poor housewife who's run out of money but the whole piece is very highly recommended, nonetheless, and very watchable with beautiful music and songs by Nina Simone and Ray Davies. The last thing I would say about this series is that it is very difficult to work out if it is pro or anti Catholic or even religion; the priest is a good man and does good work and where would we be without the work of the church but they preach to us telling us that there is a God - or a god - and it's as if they help us in the community and expect us to believe. The same dilemma is in the excellent British movie The Singer not the Song with John Mills and Dirk Bogarde.

This, so far, is excellent drama. In my opinion, it is important drama. This is the stuff of real life, of the deeply messy confusion of being human, where at best, and in spite of our best efforts, sometimes even because of our best efforts, we are constantly 'off- target'. For the central character in this story, the bullseye is Christ-like love. For others, it is family, children, the job, being able to tell the truth, and not least, being able to survive and navigate one's own conscience, or otherwise becoming a part of the 'banality of evil' by embracing dishonesty. Quite often, if our conscience still has life, we are torn and in pain, as 'we do what we must do', because someone's going to get hurt no matter how we choose. Or we die as we sleep; the sleep that is sleep because we refuse to feel pain, especially the pain of failure. But we all fail, as we are all broken.

This show encapsulates that difficult truth very well. The acting and cinematography is top-shelf (Sean Bean possibly had the wrong calling to become an actor, whilst of course, his priestly portrayal is so good because he is such a great actor) There has been some very provocative writing and some of it will set Catholic teeth on edge. My teeth have so far been far more put on edge by what I strongly feel is the over-use of violin in scenes which could stand well alone without it. And a few small continuity issues. Other than that, I look forward to the next episode of such an excellent, even spiritually provoking drama. Which will definitely not be everyone's cup of tea. but it is certainly mine thus far.

This drama is framed in the context of religion, but its really about people doing good to one and other. As the lyrics of opening theme say "Human kindness is overflowing, And I think it's gonna rain today." Wonderful. This is a drama about people doing their best to help one and other in tough times. Whether it be priest helping others with their losses, or others helping the priest with their loss of faith. It made be laugh and cry, which means that this drama worked. Finally, credit must go to the great writing, acting and production. Hope there's going to be a series 2.

This is a brilliant series, so realistic and so very difficult to watch in many parts. It had me in tears several times, and made me think hard about the difficulties in life that some people face. Sean Bean was awesome, and the support actors amazing too. I highly recommend this to anyone wanting a deeply moving and meaningful series to watch, which doesn't profess to have all the answers.

As a lapsed Catholic, I felt this programme really gave me a big warm hug and made me cry deep and long. So much so, I had to pause it to collect myself on many occasions. It felt like I was being cleansed. Not that it made Catholism out to be great, far from it. But the community love and support provided by one man was heart lifting. If only we could have that in real life.

I've never met a priest like that and I've worked with quite a few. I know a gay priest who came close, a man simply wonderful at his ministry but was publicly shamed after it became news he was on Grindr, a gay dating site. And a better priest you couldn't find, but that finished him. All my parish is interested in is your bank account details. They are shockingly avaricious. I'll tell you a story: Two priests in my parish, one drives an Audi A4 and the other a convertible...in fecking Ireland of all places!!! Apparently when questioned about the need for it, the Audi fella had the audacity to reply "God would want me to have a good reliable car that won't break down on the way to a funeral"....and they wonder why no one has any time for them?

Also priests get moved around so much, there's little point in them forging deep links in their parishes, so they don't tend to bother. There are many lovely priests doing their best but not like Fr Kerrigan in Broken. If he was my priest I would be at mass every week. So I watched this and wished I could experience this sense of community and closeness to the human condition.

Sean Bean is wonderful as Fr Kerrigan and his genuineness, even in private, was so uplifting. Broken for once portrays priests as something other than predators, although many of them are, there are some out there doing it for the right reasons. It's good to see religion in any form being shown some respect but also being held up to scrutiny too.

The writing is superb and portrays all levels of society needing guidance and non- judgement in their working and private lives. Although searingly sad at times, this series is ultimately uplifting and full of redemption. I actually want to go to mass in the morning after watching it...but I'll probably just light a candle instead, for Jimmy McGovern and Sean Bean to work together again and again!!

The only thing I've previously seen Sean Bean in was The Frankenstein Chronicles, in which he was also a bit of a wet sop. So if he is capable of playing a strong, vital, engaging character, which he may well be, I haven't seen him do it. In this, I just found it unbelievable that such a great big hulk of a guy, reasonably good looking to boot, would be such a lacklustre, spineless, wimpy sort of character. It just didn't fit. I can't think who, but I would certainly have cast someone else to play this role. And although everyone else is carrying on about how sad it was, I didn't find it affecting at all, even when it should have been. And I found the final episode the most disappointing of the lot. The 5 stars are awarded for the quality of the production and the fact that I did watch it through to the end.

Jimmy McGovern writes dramas not unlike those that Ken Loach directs: heartfelt stories of the hardness of life as a member of Britain's working class. What first got my attention in this series was a small but compelling detail: a woman commits a crime because she has no money, is essentially let off by a sympathetic magistrate, she just has to pay a small court fee, but how is she to do that when, literally, she has no money? This is a strong drama, even if its message is obvious; and important, because in spite of its obviousness, it's a message too often ignored in the corridors of power. And although it's framed around a priest's crisis of calling, which may seem an almost anachronistic concern in 21st century Britain, it transcends religion to tell a profoundly human story that is far more than just a wallow in contemporary misery.

Review up to episode 3. Shot full of brilliant acting and script plus the most challenging political and social issues today. What else would you expect from Jimmy McGovern of course. A very difficult watch but probably the best drama of its sort since Boys from the Blackstuff by Alan Bleasdale. Interesting timing having episodes before and after the election!

I usually just read reviews and feel that everything said was how I felt. In this case, this show was top notch from beginning to end. The acting was superb and the storyline was riveting. I truly wish they make another season. I check this site regularly and I'm hoping that my wish comes true. I don't understand why the US doesn't develop a show like this. I love most British shows and am a fan for life.