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No words in any drama could be more chilling than the comment by a nurse to a mum-to-be during an ultrasound scan: ‘There are a few wee things I’m not happy about.’
Those ‘few wee things’ were a death sentence for the unborn baby of first-time parents Hannah and Jonathan (Amy James-Kelly and Colin Morgan), in Three Families (BBC1).
This was a true-life story, set in Belfast, about six years ago. The pregnancy was 20 weeks along before the fatal foetal abnormality was spotted, a condition where the baby’s lungs had no room to grow. If she was not stillborn, she would suffocate within hours of birth a horrific prognosis.
“It is the mark of a good drama that hours after you have watched it you realise that you still feel angry. Three Families was one such example. Abortion is not a subject that is easy to dramatise and initially I feared that Gwyneth Hughes’s drama was settling into cliché. However, once the groundwork was done, it took off with strong, intelligent performance.”
“By virtue of its content, this could not have been other than an emotive drama. But its potential power was vastly attenuated by an underpowered, unevocative script that never allowed it to transcend the box-ticking aspect or develop the characters much beyond ciphers.”
‘We’ve all been called murderers’: Three Families and the truth about abortion in Northern Ireland Susan McKay
“Waiting,” we are told in the BBC drama Three Families, “is all there is to it.” That intense, fraught, prolonged suspension of time, during which everyday life somehow has to go on, is one of the main themes of the two-part series. A young woman longing for a baby counts the seconds aloud while she waits for the line on the test to tell her whether she is pregnant. Another, who has been interviewed by the police after they learned she had “procured” abortion pills for her teenage daughter, waits for years to find out if she will be jailed. A happily pregnant woman, who has been told there are concerns about the foetus, sits in a consultant’s waiting room with her husband for what seems like a lifetime. The news they will get will either shatter their dreams or give them hope.
TV Editor
Tonight s telly includes a celebration of Bob Marley on the 40th anniversary of his death, star-studded awards ceremony The Brits, the return of intense docuseries Hospital, and the conclusion of Three Families . . .
Pick of the Day
Bob Marley: Making of a Legend, 9.00pm, Sky Arts
Today is the 40th anniversary of reggae legend Bob Marley’s death, so Sky Arts are giving over two hours of dreadlocked documentary to the much-loved musician.
First up, at 8pm, there’s
Classic Albums: The Wailers - Catch a Fire, which looks at the making of the band’s fifth album, which brought the Jamaicans to an international audience and featured seven Bob Marley compositions, including
Where was Three Families filmed? Explore the filming locations of BBC series
Three Families arrived on BBC One and iPlayer on May 10th but just where was the drama filmed? What filming locations were used?
BBC One’s Three Families promises to be one of the must-watch TV programmes of the year.
Set in Northern Ireland between 2013 and 2019, the two-part drama tells the emotive stories of three burgeoning families whose experiences of pregnancy are restricted thanks to the country’s strict abortion laws.
But just where was Three Families filmed? What filming locations were used when making the series?
Three Families | Trailer – BBC