User Reviews

Charley Webb is a schedule 1 sex offender who has served his time in prison for having sexual intercourse (orally, vaginal and anally) with three girls between the ages of seven and eleven. Released from prison, Charley checks into residential rehab where he lives in a sheltered home and is determined to fight his desires and never hurt another child, even if that simply means for the rest of his life he can never be around children ever again.

Although they do rather tend to push the taste boundary with some of their senseless output (Big Brother etc), Channel 4 does have a place in delivering intelligent and interesting programming as was its original remit. This film will certainly not have been to the tastes of many viewers and indeed it does contain scenes that some viewers will find extremely upsetting – not because of its content but because of what it suggests and has in its past. The fact that the Daily Mail had very little good to say about this was more than sufficient recommendation for me and, true enough, the film was mostly a complex and intelligent look at paedophile Charley – a man who we are both sympathetic with and repulsed by. And this is the strength of the film. Like Charley says to Emma early on about looking past the label of "sex offender" and seeing a person underneath, this is just what the film does.

However on the flip side of this we are never allowed to forget who he is and what he does – with the "orally, vaginally and anally" remark thrown in early on to prevent us from softening his crime by hiding behind the bland word "abuse". This dual approach is worthy of the subject and it is clear why some will hate the film because it doesn't simply say Charley is a monster that should be strung up. Of course sympathising with him means that the eventual fall is just that much more sinister and unpleasant as his character shift and exploitative instincts kick in. It is frightening and it is the part of the film that many will find hard to watch despite it containing nothing sexual at all. The ending is a bit weak though and does rather undermine the difficult nature of what had gone before by taking the easy way out.

Macfadyen is cast against type and he is quite brilliant at it and he delivers really well on the script that gives him such complexity in his character. He is good at both sides of his character as he is frightened of himself and of children but then also predatory with them too. He is the whole film and mostly the support cast aren't really up to his standard – Aird, Austin, Davis and others more or less doing what is expected of them but not much more. Paige though is very natural and gives a great performance as the vulnerable Michaela who pitches her character perfectly to be just what Charley is looking for.

Overall then a complex and intelligent drama that, aside from the weak ending, doesn't offer any easy answers and will be a challenged to those who see it as a disease that can be cured as well as those who think that "hanging's too good for them".