Television series
Broken
Jimmy McGovern's six-part drama follows Father Michael Kerrigan, a priest carrying his own private guilt while ministering to a parish crushed by poverty, addiction and quiet desperation. It's slow, devastating, unflashy television — Sean Bean at his most internal, faith treated as a genuine wrestling match rather than window dressing. For people who want drama that sits with suffering instead of resolving it neatly.
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Time2021
Same writer, same star, same unflinching moral seriousness — Sean Bean plays a man imprisoned by guilt this time literally, inside a British jail rather than a confession box.
But It's bleak in a different, more claustrophobic register — three episodes of prison drama with barely a breath of relief.
Happy Valley2014
Sarah Lancashire anchors a Yorkshire crime drama that shares Broken's interest in ordinary people carrying unbearable weight, and its refusal to look away from working-class hardship.
But It's plottier and more thriller-shaped than Broken — less meditation, more escalating dread and consequence.
Three Girls2017no page yet
A true story of institutional failure and grooming told with the same McGovern-adjacent compassion and fury, giving dignity to people the system discarded.
But Based on real events and correspondingly harder to watch — this one offers no fictional distance to hide behind.
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Calvary2014
Same central question as Broken — can a priest actually absolve a community's sins, or just witness them — but compressed into two hours and shot through with gallows wit.
Brendan Gleeson plays a priest given seven days to live by a parishioner he wronged, wandering an Irish town confronting people's sins and his own — funnier, stranger, and just as devastating as Broken.
But Its dark humour and almost parable-like structure are a very different texture from Broken's naturalism.
More like this (8)
Accused2010no page yet
McGovern's anthology series, each episode a self-contained portrait of an ordinary person pushed to a breaking point — the same forensic sympathy for flawed, cornered people.
But The anthology format means less of the slow-burn intimacy Broken builds across a season with one character.
The Virtues2019no page yet
Shane Meadows directs Stephen Graham in a raw study of trauma resurfacing decades later — similarly interested in guilt as something that never actually goes away.
But Even rawer and more improvisational than Broken; some will find it almost too painful in places.
Clocking Off2000no page yet
McGovern's earlier ensemble drama, following ordinary workers whose home lives quietly unravel — the template for his gift at finding tragedy in unglamorous lives.
But Feels more of its era in pacing and style, and the ensemble format means less depth on any single character.
Cracker1993
The show that made McGovern's name — a self-destructive psychologist solving crimes while barely holding his own life together, morally messy and brilliantly written.
But It's a crime procedural at heart, with more plot mechanics than Broken's character-first approach.
Care2018no page yet
A one-off BBC drama about a family navigating Britain's crumbling social care system, with the same unsentimental eye for institutions failing decent people.
But It's a single 90-minute film rather than a series, so there's far less time to live with the characters.
Kiri2018no page yet
A social worker's decision spirals into public reckoning in this tense, morally knotty miniseries that shares Broken's interest in blame, faith in institutions, and who gets to be forgiven.
But More thriller-paced and plot-driven; it trades some of Broken's stillness for mounting tension.
I Confess1953no page yet
It's the same engine — a priest bound by faith while the world demands he speak — filtered through 1950s suspense cinema instead of contemporary social drama.
Hitchcock's tense black-and-white thriller traps a priest who knows who committed a murder but cannot break the seal of confession — the confessional as a moral prison, decades before Broken made it one.
But Classic-Hollywood pacing and Montgomery Clift's stiff formality will feel dated next to Broken's rawness.
The Keepers2017
Broken imagines a good priest failing his flock in private; this documentary shows what happens when the institution itself fails, and nobody is fictional enough to forgive.
A true-crime documentary series investigating a nun's unsolved murder that uncovers decades of Catholic institutional abuse and cover-up — real people, real wreckage, real fury.
But There's no fictional buffer here; it's a genuinely harrowing documentary, not a character study to sit with comfortably.
