Television series

Time

Name: Time
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Released: 2021
Cast: Siobhan Finneran, Sean Bean, Stephen Graham, Jodie Whittaker, Bella Ramsey

Jimmy McGovern's prison drama comes in two blistering halves — one set among men, one among women — following newcomers and staff alike as they're ground down by a system built on cruelty and neglect. It's bleak, moral, superbly acted, and asks hard questions about guilt, punishment and who gets to be forgiven. Not comfort viewing, but unforgettable.

TVMaze rating

7.6

If you liked this

Broken2017

McGovern's own follow-up, with Sean Bean again, this time as a priest wrestling with poverty, addiction and despair in his parish. Same unflinching compassion, same refusal to look away.

But Even heavier than Time in places — six episodes of grief with almost no comic relief.

Criminal Justice2008

Ben Whishaw is devastating as an ordinary young man swallowed by the justice system after one terrible night. Tense, procedural, and quietly furious about how prison actually works.

But More plot-driven and less character-focused than Time — it's building suspense, not just sitting in despair.

Unforgotten2015

A cold-case drama that treats guilt as something that ripples outward for decades, touching innocent lives long after the crime. Same interest in moral consequence, gentler pace.

But It's a procedural at heart — less claustrophobic, more puzzle-box, if you wanted Time's intensity specifically.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Scum1979

Scum invented the template Time refines — institutional violence exposed through a young inmate's eyes, decades before McGovern picked it up.

Alan Clarke's borstal drama, so brutal the BBC banned its own television version and it had to be remade as a film. The direct ancestor of everything McGovern is doing here.

But Genuinely upsetting, with a rawness that 1970s British film could get away with in ways modern TV rarely does.

Rectify2013

A man released after decades on death row tries to rejoin a world that's moved on without him. Slow, aching, and one of the best studies of what incarceration does to a person's soul.

But Glacially paced by design — if Time's tension felt right, this quieter Southern drama might frustrate you.

Orange Is the New Black2013

The obvious next stop for the women's-prison strand — funnier, soapier, but genuinely serious underneath about race, class and how the system chews people up.

But Tonally much lighter and more serialised — comedy and romance sit alongside the darkness in a way Time never allows.

This Is England2007

Stephen Graham at his most frightening and human, in Shane Meadows' study of masculinity, violence and belonging on a 1980s estate. Same rawness, same refusal to villainise simply.

But Not a prison story — it's about the conditions that lead people there, which is a different (if related) kind of gut-punch.

Bad Girls1999no page yet

The long-running British women's-prison drama that Time's second series is quietly in conversation with — earnest, soapy, and unexpectedly moving over its many seasons.

But Early-2000s production values and melodrama; it wants your loyalty across years, not one intense sitting.

Prisoners' Wives2012no page yet

Flips the camera to families on the outside, showing how a sentence punishes everyone attached to the person who committed the crime. A companion piece in every sense.

But Only two short series exist, and it's less starry — you may finish wanting more than there is.

The Shawshank Redemption1994

The prison film everyone already loves for good reason — hope smuggled into a brutal system, friendship as survival. If you want the same setting with a warmer ending, this is it.

But Its faith in redemption is far more generous than Time's — some will find it soft by comparison.

Porridge1974

Same walls, same power dynamics, same small daily humiliations Time takes so seriously — except here they're mined for comedy, proving the setting can hold either register.

A sitcom set entirely inside a British prison, and one of the funniest things the BBC ever made — Ronnie Barker's Fletcher turning incarceration into a masterclass in wit and survival.

But Pure sitcom, laugh track and all — if you came to prison drama for moral weight, this is deliberately, gloriously frivolous.

13th2016

Where Time dramatises how prison breaks individuals, 13th steps back to show the machine itself — the same anger, aimed at the whole system rather than one cell block.

Ava DuVernay's documentary traces a direct line from slavery to America's prison-industrial complex, making the systemic case that Time only gestures at through individual stories.

But It's political argument, not drama — no characters to follow, just history, statistics and testimony building toward outrage.