THIS week’s viewing has been an exploration into the origins and essence of our humanity and what being us truly means, in all its painful, joyful complexity.
Human (BBC2, five-part series, Mondays) is a visually stunning, scientific deep dive into the story of our species, presented by the palaeoanthropologist Ella Al-Shamahi. She seeks to uncover our untold origins by asking huge and complex questions. Where do we really come from? Where did it all begin? The answer is a story of chance, beauty, and destruction, migration across continents, survival, adaptation, and innovation.
This fascinating and affirming programme uncovers evidence of the activities of our ancestors 100,000 years ago, including indications of ritual and worship. This marks Homo sapiens out as being different from other species of early human. The traces that our ancestors left prove that it is not limiting to imagine what we cannot see, and to build communities around those beliefs. Our anthropological past testifies to this as the spark that makes things possible: the very definition of what it means to be human.
Unforgivable (BBC2, Thursday) is the latest gripping drama by Jimmy McGovern, exploring the themes of Catholic faith and broken humanity which have dominated his work. This drama poses a question that remains taboo and mostly unanswered: how is it possible for people who sexually abuse children to be forgiven?
The grim story is agonisingly told by a brilliant cast. The Mitchell family, headed by the mother, Anna Friel, and grandfather, David Threlfall, is coping with the devastating fallout of sexual abuse, after Anna’s brother Joe attacked her son. On his release from prison, Joe (Bobby Schofield) enters St Maura’s, a convent-style rehab centre for sex offenders, which is led by a nun (Anna Maxwell Martin). His story of coming to terms with his behaviour is told to devastating effect, alongside his nephew’s story of repressed trauma, selective mutism, and a lack of access to support.
Many strands are pulled out for consideration. What makes some people abuse while others don’t? Can you ever fully recover from sexual abuse? Are people who commit evil acts disposable and beyond redemption?
These threads are left, deliberately and frustratingly, dangling, and thus invite a wider conversation about the nature of forgiveness, and what value this radical and transgressive act has in an increasingly punitive and intolerant society.
Unforgivable is a far more important drama than the much-discussed and praised Adolescence earlier in the year (Media, 24 March). It contains more human truth and unsettling resonance, which is probably why it won’t be received with anything like the same enthusiasm. It asks too many uncomfortable questions of us all.
