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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 385705" data-attributes="member: 22">Aw, beautiful ending. And beautifully put, Mel!Oh, interesting parallel!I'm pretty sure these scenes were Jimmy McGovern's handiwork. It seems to be speciality of his -- uncovering different layers and perspectives of an issue, often coming from characters you'd least expect to hold those views (e.g. Kate ultimately siding with the "naughty" nurse over Sandra). It's something that will later fuel Cracker, arguably still McGovern's masterwork, where the central character is a criminal psychologist who frequently says the unsayable as way of making people admit to thinking the unthinkable. What's particularly interesting here is that, because Pat and Sandra are such crudely drawn characters, the dramatic contrivances leading up to the heart of the argument, i.e. the stuff that McGovern really wants to explore, feel quite exposed. So it's fascinating stuff, but also kind of polemical: the characters are clearly mouthpieces for different points of view. It's a bit like reading an early draft of something McGovern will perfect later in his career.Other themes that recur throughout McGovern's work: compulsive gambling (Edna in Brookie, Fitz in Cracker, the main character in The Lakes played by John Simm, a suicidal woman in Broken); stammering (Sizzler the gangster in late '80s Brookie, a young lad in The Lakes); Catholic priests who, while blessed with great faith, aren't so good at the celibacy side of things (Priest, where the title character played by Linus Roache falls for Robert Carlyle, and The Lakes, which includes an ongoing affair between a priest and a staunchly Catholic  housewife, a storyline  McGovern had originally intended for Sheila in Brookside) . Parents confronted by the death of a child also crop up a lot in his work --  with the Grants in Brookside, in Cracker, and both The Lakes and Hillsborough open with large-scale tragedies in which several children are lost. So does rape --Sheila obviously, then as a huge storyline in Cracker, and again in The Lakes.Love Tom. He's kind of the Mark Graison of the Wirral. An '80s self-made millionaire with control issues, he could easily be obnoxious, but the actor has a real Scouse Paul McCartney-ish charm about him. I've never been a big "shipper" (not that that term existed back then), but I was always kind of rooting for him and Heather.</blockquote>

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