Screw Episode Two Review

Screw started with a strong opening episode, and the second episode had the task to build on this solid foundation.

Leigh believes one of the prisoners is being bullied and sets out to find out why, leading Leigh to make a surprising discovery. Rose gets the unenviable task of dealing with a wheelchair-bound prisoner who is a massive loudmouth. Leigh also looks to forge her birth certificate so she can get her promotion and Rose gets pressurised by a prisoner called Costa (Ben Tavassoli) to smuggle in contraband.

Screw has only reached its second episode on broadcast TV (the complete series is available on All4 in the UK). Based on the first two episodes Screw’s structure is pretty evident: there’s a primary focus on some of the prisoners that lasts for an episode whilst Leigh and Rose’s season-long arcs move along as secondary stories. The main plots in the episodes are split into two categories: one being dramatic, the other more comedic. The showrunner had a major juggling act to manage these storylines and the different tones.

The main story of the episode involved Troy Walker (Riley Carter) and figuring out why he was bullied. The big reveal was Leigh finding out Troy was transgender which led to concerns that the prisoners have also found out. The debate amongst the prison staff was what to do with Troy in order to protect him. Leigh had to act as an investigator as well as a supportive figure, even if Troy didn’t want help.

Rose’s storyline with Tony Tanner (Bill Blackwood) was the more comedic one as she had to deal with a troublesome prisoner because of his awkward nature. Although this storyline was meant to be comedic it wasn’t that funny. It was just a story of everyone wanting to avoid Tanner. To be fair to Blackwood, he did play the role perfectly since it was easy to relate to everyone’s annoyance of him.

The more interesting storylines involved the season-long arcs for Rose and Leigh. Episode One ended with a twist where a masked man approached Rose and Rose agreed to smuggle goods into the prison. Costa put pressure on Rose despite saying she’s being watched. This episode ended with Rose preparing to cross the line.

In my review of the previous episode I theorised that Rose was a care leaver which would have made her a target for corruption. The second episode disproved this at the end because Rose catches her brother smoking and tells him to go up before their dad finds out. However, it was clear that Rose lived in a tower block and it did not look like the most pleasant of environments.

Leigh also prepares to cross the line by looking for a fake birth certificate since she’s hiding her real documents. It seems like a major step for someone looking for a promotion within the prison service. Whatever she’s hiding must be worse than using a fake document.

An area where the episode failed was with the character of Campbell. In the first episode Campbell was shown to be a judgemental character and this was notched up to eleven for episode two. In this episode he complained about Albanians saying that many were criminals and were racist. He sounded like a mini-Nigel Farage. He was less a character and more a walking, talking cliche. It was irritating.

The episode’s preachy nature was also shown during a brief conversation between Leigh and Jackie. Leigh asked what’s the point of prison if society can’t decide what its function should be: punishment or reform? To be fair to Screw this is an age-old question that still doesn’t have an answer and many prison films and TV shows have raised it in some form or another.

Episode Two was sadly a let-down after the good work of the opening episode. It lacked drama and tension and it already seemed like the show had to have a filler episode.