STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Opening in 1960s London, this six part tale tells the story of Eamonn (Jack O' Connoll) and Cathy (Joanna Vanderham), whose parents, a drunk and a prostitute, were lovers when they were children, and this forged a friendship between them, until circumstances drove them apart, and Eamonn ended up killing a rival boy in a gang fight and Cathy was spared prison by a corrupt detective (Burn Gorman) after killing an abusive client of her mother's. She ends up escaping from a tough girl's institute and ends up back in London, in Soho where she's taken under by kindly cross dresser Desrae (Alan Cumming) while Eamonn starts working for, and then has to flee from, local villain Danny Dixon (Keith Allen.) When he falls in with the IRA, it sets the two on a deadly reunion that ends up having explosive consequences.
Raw and unflinching drama seems to be the order of the day at the moment with British drama, especially so with television drama, which also refuses to let go of what was always it's stranglehold trademark of being as bleak and depressing as possible. Moving about with camcorder fluidity from the darkest corners of society to the seedy out in the open stuff on the surface, The Runaway tells a dark and harsh tale that occasionally saves it's soul with flashes of the tender love story at it's heart, that is essentially the driving force behind it all. It would never have worked as a feature film, far too long and sprawling, and so it receives the appropriate format in this six part adaptation that manages to keep the drama, for the most part, on an even keel. Inevitably, though, with such long source material, if you don't manage to stay disciplined with repeated viewings, sometimes it's hard to keep track of it all, with so much happening so quickly. A shame, since it's all so driven and slick, style and flair being the order of the day.
Performances wise, rising star O'Connoll in the lead role shows a further depth and range, but trying to apply a cockney twang to his northern dialect does make him sound strange. The likes of Allen and Cumming are well cast in their respective roles, while less heard ofs like Vanderham and Gorman also manage to be part of the driving force. It's a brutal, hard hitting piece but it's length and scope inevitably drag it out and sometimes makes it lose it's narrative flow. ***
