Three Families, episode 1, review: a curiously empty drama about the most emotive of subjects
Gwyneth Hughes is a screenwriter with a varied CV. Her credits include ITV’s adaptation of Vanity Fair, which was far better than the ratings suggested, and the Keeley Hawes drama Honour, which was far worse than audiences expected.
In Three Families (BBC One), she has turned her attention to Northern Ireland’s restrictive abortion laws, and it is not one of her better efforts. It is from the producers of Three Girls, the BBC’s dramatisation of the Rochdale grooming gangs scandal, but nowhere near the same quality.
There are few more contentious subjects than abortion – making it a bold choice for a prime-time BBC One slot – and Hughes puts us on the side of women who fell foul of the law. All are based on true stories.
The first case features a mother (Sinéad Keenan) who buys abortion pills online for her 15-year-old daughter. She is caught by the police and faces trial. In the second case, a young woman and her husband (Amy James-Kelly and Colin Morgan) are thrilled when she becomes pregnant. But the baby is found to have a foetal abnormality. The young woman is denied a termination and forced to go through with the birth.
The third case does not appear until episode two, which airs on Tuesday, but involves another woman (Genevieve O’Reilly) whose baby has a condition that will be incompatible with life. She is mentally fragile and speaks of suicide, but the doctor tells her she must follow the pregnancy to its end.
Many viewers will be appalled by these stories, and the fact that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws were not changed until 2020. Others will be angry that the BBC has picked a side. There is one pro-life voice in the drama, played by Kerri Quinn, who shares those views in real life and has said she was delighted to represent them on screen.
But with moral judgments set to one side, the programme fails purely on dramatic grounds. It feels curiously empty. Scenes that should hit like a punch in the gut – the moment that a sonographer peers at the ultrasound picture and says that something is wrong, for example – barely land.
The second episode is largely taken up by the campaign to change the law, and it goes by in court hearings and meetings with lawyers and talk of private members bills. Somehow this most emotive of topics is given a colourless treatment.
