Screen Two

- Season 13

(1996)

A beautiful young dentist (Ormond) working in a tough British prison starts to become attracted to a violent inmate (Roth) after the break-up of her marriage, and embarks upon an illicit affair with him, with terrible consequences for all.

Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1963. He would appear to live a life of quiet desperation: he's gay, but firmly closeted, and his sister is always trying to find him "the right girl". His passion is Oscar Wilde, his hobby is putting on amateur theatre productions in the local church hall. We follow him as he struggles with temptation, friendship, disapproval, and the conservative yet oddly lyrical world of Ireland in the early 1960s.

When 15-year-oid Jack's parents die, he and his sister Julie are worried that their younger brother and sister will be taken into care. As the pressures of trying to keep their family together build up, Jack finds the sexual frustrations of teenage life and his growing attraction for his sister starting to impinge on their already complicated lives.

Two boyhood friends end up on different sides of the law. How will each react when they meet up for the first time since school?

Rosie Williams is haunted by the murder of her husband 12 years previously. Her teenage son John is heading for a life of delinquency fuelled by revenge. Then, he meets Billy McVea, who runs a boxing gym, affecting all their lives.

Paul Reisner, a young doctor, becomes a researcher in a prestigious medical institute. He feels he has a chance to be part of a movement of unending progress in science and civilization. Then he begins to discover the dark side of the institute, which foreshadows the dark side of the 20th century.