British series deftly combines absurdity, grimly funny one-liners and social commentary. The six-episode series owes a nod to The Office and Teachers, but rather than the schoolyard or office, Screw looks at the institutionalised inmates, management and guards within a major prison complex. There's no denying the bleak truth of a corrupt system rife with contraband smuggling and chronic under-funding, but the reality is delivered with plenty of smart, snarky British humour. It’s terrain the British have a knack for. The Full Monty and This is England explored political upheaval, economic crisis, job loss and social unrest but the politics never overpowered the complicated, compelling personal drama. The same is true of Screw.
Creator of Screw, Rob Williams taught in prisons before he became a screenwriter, and his observations on the many ways prisons are a microcosm of real life are apt. Routines, regimes, imagined limitations, and the acceptability of what we can say and do are all a self-built prison, to an extent. Through Leigh and Rose, Williams draws out bigger questions of class, privilege, and gender norms. Screw – like another SBS On Demand series, the - asks the poignant question of whether, and how, humans can be redeemed.
Screw Source: Channel 4
The politics of Long Marsh men's prison are much murkier amongst the staff than the prisoners. The Governor's ploy is to drive out the veteran staff and replace them with new recruits, creating an immediate division between the experienced staff and newcomers. Leigh Henry (Nina Sosanya) has won her experience through toil and struggle, so she is not going to give up her job so that upstarts like the young, fearless probationer Rose Gill (Jamie-Lee O'Donnell) can traipse in and take over.
Sosanya proved her drama-comedy versatility in Teachers, and her confident chutzpah in a schoolroom has easily transitioned into a prison environment, where she talks to the prisoners as if they're badly behaved kids. At the end of the day, she arrives home alone to an apartment that has been hastily set up, so that it looks more like a hotel, and more often than not, she makes her home in a spare cell in the prison. This isn't a woman who has time for anything as indulgent as artwork and throw-rugs. There's a gentleness to her interactions with the prisoners, indicating the sort of sympathy not always expected of hardened prison guards. But that sort of camaraderie has a cost, and when Leigh asks a prisoner convicted for forgery to craft her a birth certificate, she crosses an ethical, legal line that - if discovered - will rob her of her job, her reputation and her identity as a respected prison guard.
Jamie-Lee O'Donnell stars as Rose Gill in 'Screw'
If this sounds more dramatic than comedic, then that's a fair reflection of where Screw lands. It has a throbbing heart of drama in terms of plot and relationships, but it is not without a generous dose of witty one-liners and absurdity (a "rental" pornographic magazine being shared between prisoners, and two of the guards shagging in the staff toilets while still in uniform). It's a comedy that caters less to guffaws and more to sly grins, and it isn't all about Rose and Leigh.
Stephen Wight as Gary Campbell and Ron Donachie as Don Carpenter in 'Screw'
When one of the officers dies on duty, the mundanity of routines and the complacency the guards had previously taken for granted is shattered. The dynamic will irrevocably change in the prison, and the violence, fury and fear that exists amongst men in the prison can’t be hidden behind polite facades any longer. With a spotlight on the guards, including a crackdown by the authorities on how the prison is run, can Nina and Rose keep their secrets, and their jobs?
Find out in the first series of Screw (a third season is pending confirmation).
Screw premieres on SBS On Demand Friday 1 March.
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Screw
