Mother's Day BBC2: IRA Warrington bombing leaves a young boy dead sparking grief and action in new TV series

In mourning: Daniel Mays and Anna Maxwell Martin play the parents of 12-year-old Tim Parry, who died in the Warrington bombing
BBC/Steffan Hill

When something bad happens, the human impulse is to find out where your loved ones are. If you can’t track them down, the panic sets in.

Mother’s Day (BBC2, 9pm) begins with a neighbour asking Wendy Parry if she knows where her son is.

While she’s been driving with her husband — him ironically worrying about whether having her behind the wheel is safe — her son Tim, aged 12, has been hit by a bomb.

This drama is based on a true story. In 1993 the IRA attacked a shopping centre in Warrington on the day before Mother’s Day. Tim Parry was caught in the blast and died in hospital five days later; 56 people were injured and a three-year-old, Jonathan Ball, also died. His babysitter had taken him out to buy a Mother’s Day card.

The show’s writer, Nick Leather, grew up near Warrington and was 15 when it happened. Like Tim, he supported Everton (in the show, we briefly meet a sweet Tim justifying paying £19 for shorts because they are the same as goalie Neville Southall’s). Leather remembers the dignified statements of Colin Parry, Tim’s father. With remarkable composure, he devoted himself to working towards peace in Ireland so that his son’s death would not have happened for no reason.

When Leather looked into the bombings, though, he became interested in Wendy. She and Colin were affected by grief in different ways at different times. Leather tells the story from her perspective, as it intersects with the story of another housewife.

Over in Dublin Susan McHugh saw the news of the bombings in a paper brought to her by her children on Mother’s Day, and felt compelled to take action. Here, she is driven by wanting to be able to tell her children that something is being done to stop the senseless atrocities.

As Vicky McClure, who plays Susan with a stirring intensity, says: “I’m just an ordinary woman with two children, a cat and a mortgage, but enough is enough.”

Without knowing what she is doing, she starts a movement: 20,000 attended her peace rally in O’Connell Street. By keeping it apolitical, she achieved what politicians were struggling to do and started the peace process.

Pictured: Vicky McClure and David Wilmot as Susan and Arthur McHugh
BBC/Steffan Hill

When I saw that Mother’s Day was an hour-and-a-half long, I didn’t know if I had the stamina for it. But I couldn’t tear myself away. It’s brilliantly judged. Leather knows that the real source material is emotional enough and leaves the cast to give economical performances. Nothing is overblown.

Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Wendy, is the master of conveying a lifetime’s emotion in a look. We see her giddy happiness when her boy is born and the haunting change when he is taken from her and her other children. Wendy — in a buttoned-up trenchcoat that she doesn’t take off during Tim’s time in hospital — saying goodbye to her son is a haunting image. There’s a particularly poignant scene when Tim’s brother and sister make sure she eats dinner, even if it’s just margarine on bread.

No one is a hero. We see them taking action despite paralysing fear, as well as hostilities between Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK. The narrative is interspersed with real news footage, revealing how people were at a loss in the face of this hatred.

The Parrys and McHughs spoke to Leather for the programme and are proud of it. This is a bold piece of film-making that does a remarkable job of telling the story of the humans caught up in Irish politics.

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