Secret Life - Observer article 1st April

A stark new drama, starring Matthew Macfadyen, challenges the accepted view and treatment of paedophiles. It will be shown apparently on 19th April 2007 on Channel 4.

The Observer has an article on the drama.

Charlie Webb wears a blue elastic band round his wrist. When he twangs it, he believes it breaks his thoughts, pulling him up short when he is sexually attracted to young girls. It is his improvised way of controlling himself. Charlie is a convicted paedophile, newly released from prison, determined not to offend again. He's also fictional and the focus of a new Channel 4 drama, Secret Life, from writer and debut director Rowan Joffe.

Charlie, played by Matthew Macfadyen, recently Mr Darcy opposite Keira Knightley in Pride & Prejudice, likens his battle to avoid temptation to 'struggling uphill in the dark'. The film, based on four years' research by Joffe, highlights how little support Charlie is given once out of prison, in part because of a widespread perception that paedophiles are simply wired that way, will keep offending and that the only solution is to lock them up and throw away the key.

Like the recent Kate Winslet film, Little Children, about a community turning on a released sex offender, Secret Life sets out to challenge this most deep-rooted of prejudices. It gives Charlie some potential for reform or, at least, self-control. What, in the script, threatens to tip him back into offending is the driving underground of offenders that results from the public's antipathy to released paedophiles. Our fears, it suggests, are leading to the very scenario we want to avoid.

 

Read the full article at the Observer.