Stephen Graham is clogging up the Netflix charts once again after Netflix quietly dropped both seasons of the BBC drama Accused this week – the 2010-2012 anthology series has already bagged second spot on the streamer’s top TV ranking.
The anthology drama features Adolescence star and co-creator Graham, alongside other big names including Sean Bean, Olivia Colman, Anna Maxwell Martin and Sheridan Smith, and comes from the pen of scouse screenwriting legend Jimmy McGovern.
The dark anthology series tells the stories of different people accused of crimes and awaiting their verdict in court, with each tale taking the audience into dark moral waters over who they actually support as it jumps backwards and forwards between verdicts, crimes, background and consequences.
One episode stars Yorkshire Tea flagbearer Sean Bean as an English teacher whose alter ego leads him down a dark romantic path, while Cracker star Eccleston shows up as a plumber in the midst of a somewhat annoyed midlife crisis. Another stars The Office’s Mackenzie Crook as a sadistic army officer, while “Mr Motion Capture” Andy Serkis drops in as an obsessive taxi driver on the brink of a breakdown.
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Creator McGovern is already synonymous with bleak, desolate, and utterly compelling drama, and his 2010 creation is no exception. His most recent IMDb entry, Unforgivable, took child sexual abuse as its subject for a subtle examination.
When Accused was first released on the BBC, the typically uncompromising scribe took aim at some of the UK’s favourite shows, such as Doctor Who and Downton Abbey, for being drama that ‘didn’t matter’.
He added that said he believed the best writing takes itself seriously, as well as taking its audience seriously.
“I just can’t handle the tongue-in-cheek approach, the kind of thing you see on Dr Who,” he said, “though there are millions who can, I know.”
He went on to say that he made a point of steering clear of predictable police procedural fare and instead concentrated on crime and punishment with Accused.
Despite McGovern’s glum take on crime and punishment, Accused has a 92% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a user rating of 7.9 out of 10 on IMDb.
