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Last week’s superb episode of Accused, 'Frankie’s Story', certainly set a high standard for this week’s episode to live up to. However, 'Helen’s Story' was so different to Frankie’s that it would be impossible to compare them.
Helen (Juliet Stevenson) receives news that her son has been killed on his first day of work at a local warehouse. It is believed to be an accidental death, but Helen is convinced that the manager of the warehouse (Peter Wright) failed to ensure that her son was given proper training, and does everything she can to prove that she is right. But the question is (as ever), how does she end up in the dock herself? As with the opening episode of the series, this is a fairly basic setup that has been done in various ways before but, again, just like the opening episode, the superlative writing and acting ensures that Accused won’t be dismissed as a routine drama.
The stand-out performance this week came from Stevenson, an actress who isn’t on our screens anywhere nearly as often as she should be. Her performance is among that rare class where you forget that you are watching somebody acting. She is Helen. She perfects every emotion with such subtlety, with a particularly poignant scene where she is lying in bed with her husband, Frank (Peter Capaldi) and she reaches out for his hand while they try to overcome their different approaches to grieving. His words almost become irrelevant, however, as you can see a small tear drop forming in Stevenson’s eye, and in such a simple moment, she bewitches the audience. The closing scenes are also beautiful, as Helen pleads with the jury for justice and Frank finally offers her his support, and the ending left a warm feeling inside, which was refreshingly different to the previous episodes.
The production values of the episode were also fantastic, with techniques such as the hand-held camera and soft focus camera lens perfectly matching the lack of control that Helen felt, and the blurring of the line between right and wrong. Moreover, the basic music was a perfect complement to the solemn tone of the episode, and the fact that it was sparsely used made the scenes where it was absent even more powerful and added to the realism; it was startling how much emotion was present in such simplistically presented scenes.
The one slight criticism that I would give is the casting of Peter Capaldi because, while he was excellent in his role, he is so well known for comedy that (as with Mackenzie Crook last week) it is slightly difficult to separate him from his comedy roles. Having said that, he did get the best line of the episode when he told a brilliant joke about a fitted kitchen.
Therefore, while 'Helen’s Story' didn’t leave you feeling like someone has attacked you with a sledgehammer in the gut like 'Frankie’s Story', it left just as impressive an impact thanks to the subtlety of the performances, the writing and the production. Accused is fast cementing itself as the week’s must watch television event.
See the fourth episode of Accused, ‘Liam’s Story’, next Monday at 9pm on BBC1.
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