THEY'LL NEVER WALK ALONE (ANNE)

 

Last summer Trevor Hicks announced the Hillsborough Families Support Group was coming to an end.

"We are all getting old," explained the Keighley businessman, who lost his two daughters in the English football stadium disaster.

"I was just over 40 when the group started - I'm 74 now.

"We will deal with matters as they come up. We haven't been able to meet in person for over a year due to the COVID restrictions.

"We can't have a formal annual (memorial) service. The families are tired and we are definitely going to keep in touch."

The story of Trevor Hicks and his daughters memorably featured in writer Jimmy McGovern and director Charles McDougall's powerful 1996 docudrama 'Hillsborough'.

Not only did the one-off ITV drama cover the terrible events of that day through the eyes of three Liverpudlian families, it was also effective in conveying the emotional toll of the tragedy on those left behind. 

'Hillsborough' was fuelled by a deep seated rage at a series of injustices inflicted on the relatives of those Liverpool fans killed on April 15, 1989.

Those injustices were inflicted by elements within the South Yorkshire police, by the courts, by politicians and by Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun.

McGovern's BAFTA award winning drama with Christopher Eccleston, Ricky Tomlinson and Mark Womack was a high watermark for factually based drama.

'Hillsborough,' though, could never be the definitive telling of the story in much the same way that neither Paul Greengrass's 'Bloody Sunday' nor Jimmy McGovern's 'Sunday' could ever have been definitive accounts of the killing of 14 civilians in Derry-Londonderry by the British Parachute Regiment in 1972.

MacDougall and McGovern could only cover a fraction of the stories that emerged from that day.

And now ITV has produced another Hillsborough story with 'Anne', which sees writer Kevin Sampson and director Bruce Goodison examine events from the perspective of a mother of a 15 year old boy who died that day.

Maxine Peake is perfectly cast as Anne Williams who refused to be browbeaten into accepting the findings of an inquest into her son Kevin's death.

Luckily, Sampson and Goodison aren't intimidated by the fact that McGovern and McDougall have already told the struggle of the Hillsborough families so powerfully.

Instead, their four part ITV miniseries serves as a companion piece to the 1996 drama.

It firmly focuses on the telling of Anne Williams' story and allows the events to speak for themselves.

By getting these basics right, the miniseries is all the more moving.

'Anne' begins as you'd expect, with Campbell Wallace's Liverpool FC mad Kevin pestering his mum and his dad, Stephen Walters' Steve for a ticket to the FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest.

Eventually they relent and away he goes with his best mate to Sheffield, never to return.

In the first episode, Sampson and Goodison chart the events as they unfolded from the perspective of the Williams family.

There is no attempt to recreate the disaster.

Instead, just like the Williams family, we watch the horror of the events in the stadium unfold live on television.

We feel the family's increasing anxiety as day turns to night with no word of Kevin's whereabouts.

Calls are made to an information helpline but to no avail.

After an anxious wait, Steve and Anne head to Sheffield the following morning, only for their car to run out of petrol on a country road.

They're helped by Chris Coghill's kind hearted farmer who, understanding the situation, wishes the couple well.

Arriving at Hillsborough football ground, they are directed to an incident centre to see if they can trace their son.

Eventually in a spectacularly grim sequence, the Williams discover Kevin has died after they are directed to a corridor and a noticeboard with Polaroids of the victims.

Sampson and Goodison in the first episode do an excellent job depicting a family mesmerised by the scale of tragedy and the legal procedures that engulf them.

Appallingly, Kevin's inquests and other inquests do not consider events beyond 3.15pm, discounting vital evidence that shows some victims were awaiting medical attention and may have been alive after thisarbitrary cut-off point.

Worse still, tabloid reporters hassle the Williams family as they grieve.

One even brings flowers to their kitchen door in a bid to get them to respond to false claims in The Sun newspaper that drunken Liverpool fans were responsible for the disaster, pickpocketed the victims and attacked and urinated on police officers rushing to the aid of the dying.

The journalist even tries to swipe a photo of Kevin.

Anne works through her desire to find out more about how and why her son died by joining a support group for the families of Hillsborough victims.

Rob Jarvis' John Glover, a leading light in the group, directs her to Clare Calbraith's Sheila Coleman who has examined the events from many angles and more disturbing evidence comes to light that suggests Kevin was alive after 3.15pm.

This includes testimony from David Walmsley's PC Derek Bruder that he gave mouth to mouth resuscitation to Kevin after 3.15pm.

Raymond Waring's traumatised Liverpool supporter Steve Hart comes forward too to testify that he carried Kevin on a makeshift stretcher, fashioned out of an advertising hoarding, to an area of the stadium where the dying were awaiting treatment and believed he was alive.

A renewed focus on her son's case results in interest being taken by ITV's hard hitting investigative reporting show 'The Cook Report'.

There's a House of Commons intervention from Paul McGann's Conservative MP, Sir Malcolm Thornton which forces a fresh review into how the inquests were conducted into the deaths of all the victims.

As the Hillsborough campaign group's attempts to establish the truth start to consume Anne's life, her husband Steve becomes more withdrawn and resentful of her role.

Can Anne and the families get to the truth of what happened, while also holding her family together?

Sampson's screenplay and Goodison's miniseries takes a straight forward approach to Anne's story, charting the ups and many downs of the Hillsborough families' battle for justice through her eyes.

It is a tremendously compassionate account of Williams' story and it never condescends.

At its heart is a magnificent performance by Maxine Peake as Anne that burns with an intelligence and intensity that never fades.

Peake is complemented by a cast who deliver equally heartfelt performances.

Stephen Walters is excellent as her husband Steve, a decent father driven further into his shell by the enormity of the events unfolding around him.

Lily Shepherd and Bobby Schofield bring real sensitivity to the roles of Kevin's siblings, Sara and Michael Williams.

Clare Calbraith, Rob Jarvis and Polly Highton gel well with Peake as her fellow campaigners Sheila Coleman, John and Teresa Glover.

David Walmsley is very effective in capturing Derek Bruder's initial unease at being asked to break from the official police line on the disaster.

Raymond Waring conveys the fragility of those haunted by what they saw at Hillsborough, while John McGrellis is effective as a Liverpool fan called Colin whose best friend never quite got over what he witnessed.

Ian Puleston-Davies and Anthony Calf do a good job as Queen's University Belfast Professor Phil Scraton and Bishop James Jones, while Matthew McNulty helps enhance Labour's Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham's reputation as the one politician prepared to really take on board the families' criticism.

'Hillsborough' star Mark Womack provides a nice link to the original Jimmy McGovern drama when he appears as Anne's brother.

Sampson and Goodison impressively weave the personal highs and lows of Anne's life into the overall narrative.

But they also cleverly deploy TV footage of landmark moments in the families' quest for justice alongside clips of major events like New Labour's 1997 General Election win, Liverpool's dramatic 2005 Champions League triumph over AC Milan in Istanbul and the election of David Cameron and Nick Clegg's 2010 coalition government as time rolls on.

One of the most dispiriting clips used is the bullish comments of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's press secretary Bernard Ingham on BBC1's 'Question Time,' blaming the disaster on ticketless Liverpool fans.

That moment drives home the scale of the prejudice the Hillsborough families faced in their battle for the truth.

It also reflects poorly on those who dismissed their efforts.

With 'Anne,' Sampson and Goodison have created an absorbing TV drama that is so beautifully written and acted, it should reduce the hardest of hearts to having a lump in their throat by the time Gerry and the Pacemakers' poignant 'You'll Never Walk Alone' inevitably plays over the closing credits.

'Anne' is a wonderful tribute to the dogged campaigner who inspired the miniseries and also to the determination of those families who have not quite had the justice they crave.

Walking through the storm of the past 32 years, the Hillsborough families have managed to hold their heads up high.

Their quest for justice for the 97 will continue and dramas like 'Anne' are an essential part of that struggle.

Dramas as good as 'Anne' ensure they'll never walk alone.

('Anne' was broadcast on ITV between January 2-5, 2022)

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