REVIEW: Innocent, Series 2 Episode Two

 REVIEW: Innocent, Series 2 Episode Two

Having your life destroyed cannot be an easy thing to deal with, especially if you're somebody in a high paying job like Sally Wright (Katherine Kelly). It's hard to imagine just how painful it would be to be receiving a decent salary as a teacher, only for it to be bulldozed by a false arrest. It would surely be totally soul destroying.

So it's understandable that Sally continues her determination to get her job back, after having been acquitted of her charges in the previous episode. At the start of this instalment, she heads to an interview at the school to become a supply teacher. The head, Emily (Krissi Bohn), is overseeing proceedings. The scene really plays into the desperation of a woman trying to claw back what she is qualified to do, and it shows that desire for a return to her old life experienced by the character excellently. In a way it's as though what Sally ultimately wants to do is to pretend her false verdict never happened, and wipe the past few years clean, but no matter how hard she tries the past cannot be changed.

It's a sentiment echoed when Karen (Priyanga Burford) approaches Emily and states her displeasure at the idea of Sally teaching again. Sally is innocent, and yet she's still being seen as guilty, which conveys this real feel of tragedy to proceedings. We know that Sally did not do what she was accused of, and yet the damage has already been done. People like Karen don't suddenly change their mind, because their view has already been made up. It shows how stubborn the public consensus can be, and how afraid people are to change their opinions on something they were previously led to believe. 

Thankfully Sally does get the supply teacher position, but it's not the best first day back for her. First her students start watching a clearly inappropriate video of Sally's face pasted onto a naked female body, and then Karen warns her to stay away from her and her family. This feels very much like the cold, hard reality of a woman accused of the kind of acts Sally was imprisoned for. Things are not going to just return to how they were overnight, after all. There's clearly still some time that needs to pass first before she will be properly accepted by society again. For the mean time, Sally is still being punished. 

Somebody else who was clearly struggling when he was alive was Matthew Taylor. In this episode we discover that he was having family issues, to the point where he chose to sleep on a park bench away from his Dad John (Andrew Tiernan) and Mum Maria (Lucy Black). It paints something of a depressing figure for Matthew, someone who was clearly experiencing problems with his mental health and perhaps required more support than he received. The poor guy was struggling before he was murdered, and it's a shame he didn't receive more help. It also makes his family seem somewhat dysfunctional, because it's quite clearly not normal for a domestic situation to reach the point where the son leaves and starts sleeping on park benches.

It makes you wonder if he found out what we now know about his domestic situation. For it's in this episode that we learn that John was not his biological Dad. He was actually the result of Maria's one night stand in Blackpool. It's clearly something that has a profound impact on the family, as John shows flashes of anger and there's maybe even a hint that Maria is scared of him because of his outbursts. It's no surprise that this kind of toxic dysfunctional behaviour led to such a deeply unhappy son, as it doesn't seem very healthy. John's parentage twist may not have been one that I was expecting, but in context it explains a lot, and paints a rather sad image of the Taylors as a whole.

Anna Stamp's (Ellie Rawnsley) motivations for her lies regarding Sally is something else made clearer here. It turns out she had feelings for Matthew which were unrequited, and she was jealous of  Sally's strong teacher-student relationship with him, always casting Matthew in school plays. This girl's obsession with Matthew is a little disturbing, going as far as to etch his name on her skin. It raises the question as to whether she could be the one responsible for his murder, perhaps viewing it as nobody being able to have him if she can't?

Overall, Innocent Series Two's second episode forwards the plot considerably, in a way that proves very engaging. We receive some answers both on Anna Stamp's motivations for lying about Sally and Matthew having inappropriate romantic feelings, and the overall family situation regarding the Taylor family. Two episodes in, and Innocent's second series is going at a rollicking pace. Here's hoping it keeps it up for the final two episodes of the series.

What are your thoughts on the second episode of Innocent's second series? Let me know in the comments.