Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10
Cast: Iain Glen, Killian Scott, Nora-Jane Noone, John Kavanagh, Paraic Breathnach, Susanne Schrader, Midie Corcoran, Lovis Baum, Dion Arensmann, Ronan Leahy, Eithne Ní Enrí, Nina Borey, Pippa Borey, Nuala Donnolly, Barry Keoghan, Chris Connors, Gary Hetzaler, Martin Linnane, Fionn O’Shea, Ingrid Craigie, Gavin Drea, Síghle Ní Chonail, Andreas Krämer, Ray Quinn.
The family Priest is still perhaps the most revered person in any village, town or city in most parts of Ireland. They’re there in times of great distress to offer comforting words, to hear the most innermost of thoughts without passing judgement of any of his parishioners and yet the world of religion in Ireland is often tainted with stories and subsequent trials of sexual abuse by priests and in some respects mental abuse carried out by nuns in the name of a God. To tackle this in any story on television takes great care, to have trust that the story will not descend into a mockery of what happened in the disgraceful past.
It is not the first time the makers of Jack Taylor have lifted the veil over abuse issues in the church, with the ex-Guard’s own mother having had dealings with the nuns of the parish but Priest takes the abuse to a point where the grotesque is underlined and heavily scored.
When a Priest who has been abroad for 20 years is found beheaded in the church in Galway, it sparks an investigation that takes Jack Taylor and his loyal young friend Cody Farraher down a path that neither of them are truly equipped to deal with and the black heart they find at the end of the tunnel never truly stops sucking the life out of Galway.
For anybody who has not really enquired about religion in Ireland, Jack Taylor does shine a very dirty lamp under the bedclothes and points out some disturbing details of what was deposited there when the sweeping under the carpet had finished.
The final moments of this particular episode are amongst the most shocking, the retribution upon Jack Taylor that is sought out by the sister of the perpetrator of one of the past crimes in a cycle of abuse is just as hard hitting. The abuse never ends and it is the innocent who end up paying the ultimate price.
A disturbing episode in which the urge to flinch in the face of fear is not cowardly but should at least be faced with anger.
Ian D. Hall