Unforgivable: harrowing drama about abuse and rehabilitation

Are British audiences ready for a sympathetic portrayal of a convicted paedophile?

That is one question posed by Jimmy McGovern's "Unforgivable", said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. This one-off BBC2 drama introduces us to the Mitchells, a working-class family in Liverpool that is "buckling under the strain of an uncle who sexually abused his young nephew". The culprit, Joe (an excellent Bobby Schofield), is on early release from prison. He is forbidden even from attending his mother's funeral, and is spurned by his sister (Anna Friel), whose abused son is now being marked out for his unruly behaviour at school. Joe has "polluted the entire family" – and he knows it.

McGovern's script doesn't gloss over the "catastrophic impact" of Joe's actions, said Carol Midgley in The Times. But it's bracing to see the aftermath of child sex abuse from the abuser's perspective: it is spelled out for us, and we are asked even to understand it. Joe, it turns out, was himself abused as a child, and he is now living in a halfway house run by a nun (Anna Maxwell Martin) and is consumed by self-hatred. It's testament to the writing that "you actually find yourself wanting him to catch a break".

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We're left to decide whether we should feel any compassion for Joe, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. The drama ends rather too neatly: it is as if "McGovern was told he needed to wrap it up on a positive note"; but it's otherwise a "thought-provoking piece" on a subject most writers wouldn't dare touch.