The Accident review: Devastating, Grenfell-inspired portrayal of how a disaster affects a community

In Thorne and his cast’s skilful hands, a mass tragedy exposes smaller-scale traumas, too

Ed Cumming
Friday 25 October 2019 08:00 BST
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The Accident trailer

The writer Jack Thorne says his latest four-part drama, The Accident (Channel 4), which explores the aftermath of a disaster on a small community, was shaped by the Grenfell Tower fire. Rather than overcrowded west London, his takes place in Glyngolau, a fictional run-down town in Wales. A new building project, The Light, is being built on the outskirts. It’s unclear what The Light is, exactly, which is deliberate. The point is not what it is, exactly, but what it represents: 1,000 new jobs and a rare moment of economic optimism for families who have forgotten what hope feels like. Thorne is reunited with Sarah Lancashire, who previously starred in his adoption drama, Kiri. She plays Polly Bevan, a hairdresser with a wild 15-year-old daughter, Leona (Jade Croot) and a husband, Iwan (Mark Lewis Jones), who as a local councillor was responsible for securing the investment.

One afternoon, while most of the town is on a fun run, a group of local children, led by Leona, hop the fence around the building site and go inside to do graffiti on the virgin walls. Gas canisters stand around ominously, and someone asks for a lighter. The camera cuts back to the run, where local parents are interrupted by the sound of a huge explosion. Firemen rush into the stricken building, but it soon collapses. The parents watch, ash settling on their faces, trying to come to terms with what’s happening.

The title, The Accident, is tragically ironic. Most of the drama centres around who is to blame. Is it the parents, for not keeping a closer eye on their children? Is it the headstrong kids themselves, playing where they’re not meant to be? The obvious villain is the building company, Kallbridge Developments. Harriet Paulsen (Sidse Babett Knudsen), the executive, and her assistant Tim (Nabhaan Rizwan) must try to establish what has happened without admitting culpability.

The town implodes under the strain of the deaths and life-changing injuries. The cast is packed with sensitive, subtle actors, who can convey emotional blows with a glance. Lancashire is fantastic, but she is supported ably by Joanna Scanlan, as grieving mother Angela, and Genevieve Barr as Debbie, whose husband, Alan, was in charge of site security. Debbie feels duty bound to defend her late partner’s honour, but for others, his was a lapse in concentration with irretrievable consequences. Barr is deaf, and so is her character; her communication skills prove useful in understanding children too shocked to speak.

The first episode’s most startling moment is not the explosion, which we know is coming, or the deaths of the children, but an outburst of domestic violence. You might guess that an accident like this would expose corporate malfeasance and government neglect, but in Thorne and his cast’s skilful hands, these events expose smaller-scale traumas, too, none the less devastating.

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