The revelation floors us - we did not see that coming, but it also raises the important point: who is served by this man being in prison for 25 years? Eventually, Brendan cracks and simply tells the brother: “I told him that I loved him”. He’s told that his friend’s parents both died of grief, and he’s called a murderer. She perceptively points out: “he sees every day in prison as one more day of atonement”.Īlso seeking atonement is Brendan, who’s in another appeal for his parole, but he’s not willing to reveal why he killed his teenage friend. Not about the shame he brought on his family, like he first thinks, but how proud he was of Mark once he stepped up and confessed his crime, and with the humility he accepted his time in prison. He reads the speech, but also gets some home truths from his mother’s speech which ends up being about Mark. In touching scenes, they both live-track the event, with little painful asides as Mark realises that his actions have meant he is unable to say goodbye in person to his parent. Good thing lovely nun Marie Louise (Siobhan Finnegan) is on hand to provide a 21st Century solution to the problem: she’ll email over Mark’s speech, and the family will send back an order of service so they can run through it virtually from jail. Doh - landing himself further in the shit. Did Kav grass him up? It’s almost irrelevant as when Eric tells him what’s gone down on the cell block, Mark admits: “I thought he’d got rid of it”. Mark is so close to leaving the prison - and passing through the rigamarole it takes simply to open a garage door - when Eric gets word of the bust, and Mark’s no longer allowed to go to his dad’s send off. The bad news? That pesky phone has reared its head again. The good news? As a well-behaved prisoner, he’ll be able to attend the funeral on day release. All hopes of settling into a life of humdrum existence and managing to keep his head down from any of the rife violence disappear when he learns that his dad has died. There’s no way Eric’s getting out of this predicament unscathed, is there? David warns Eric that if he’s caught, as a prison guard, he’ll have to do “five years with the nonces”. Poor deluded David thinks that he’s getting the royal treatment in prison as he didn’t grass about his beating, but mum Sonia (Hannah Walters) has some home truths for him: “They’re shitbags”, and that they’re only being nice because Daddy is supplying them with their drugs. “Okay,” says Brendan in exactly the same manner as Jackson. The micro-phone pops up in Mark’s cell - obviously handed straight over to Daniel (Jack McMullen), Jackson’s lackey, for safe-keeping - and Mark, perhaps unwisely, discusses the problem with Kav, who he’s been teaching reading. Just like The Sixth Sense, Mark realises that he’s not the only one haunted by hallucinations of dead people. One of the kids asks what exactly he did to make his friend react the way he did, but he doesn’t answer. You can practically see all the air leaving the room. I killed him with a brick.I heard his ma screaming”. In some of the series’ most brutal lines, he admits: “I did something and he didn’t want to be my friend anymore, so I killed him. ‘Time’ Episode 2 Recap: Confronting Demonsīack in the church support group and there’s more truths being uncovered: Brendan (Jonathan Harden) reveals that he’s been in prison since the age of 13, when he killed his best friend. Peep at the teeny-tiny mobile phone he’s also brought in - this is actually the item that’s going to cause all sorts of chaos later on. “Okay,” Jackson says ominously, in clear-cut signs that it’s anything but. It could even be Eric at the end of the offending blade.
He tells Jackson no dice - that he will end up on a murder charge as he brought it into the prison. This time he’s expected to smuggle in a switch-blade knife, certain to end in death or serious injury to the inmates.
Forced to smuggle in black market goods to his prison - and to see the horrifying effect of the drugs ripple through his wing - to protect his own son in prison and jailed gangland boss Jackson (Brian McCardie) has upped the stakes yet again. Guard Eric McNally (Stephen Graham) has reached his tipping point.
There’s further agonising flashbacks to come this episode - letting us into the psyche of Mark, and the abhorrent and humiliating B-roll of memories he’s forced to grapple with on a daily basis while in jail. Banging down the door of his family home, he’s absolutely leathered, yelling “Let me in, woman!” He wakes in a cold sweat: it’s day 382 of his four-year-stretch. We’re finally let into Mark Cobden’s (Sean Bean) life pre-prison, and just like his daily slops, it’s not pretty.