# The Virtues (2019)

> A despairing father abandons his life and sails to Ireland to confront the childhood trauma he has never faced.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/74656

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 45 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Created by: Shane Meadows
- Network: Channel 4
- Cast: Stephen Graham, Niamh Algar, Helen Behan, Frank Laverty, Mark O'Halloran, Deirdre Donnelly, James Nelson-Joyce, Liam Carney
- TMDB rating: 8.1/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7186126/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: bleak, intimate, harrowing, raw, melancholic

## What critics say

Viewers broadly rate the miniseries positively, praising its tense, emotionally raw handling of trauma and Stephen Graham's performance, while acknowledging it is harrowing to watch.

## Synopsis

The Virtues (2019) is a British four-episode miniseries created by Shane Meadows for Channel 4. Stephen Graham plays Joseph, a man sinking into alcoholic despair after his nine-year-old son Shea leaves for Australia with his ex Debbie (Juliet Ellis). Rather than face his present, Joseph walks away from his life and boards a boat to Ireland to confront memories from his childhood. Niamh Algar plays Dinah, one of the people who shape his return, and Helen Behan and Niamh Cusack appear among the principal cast. The engine of the story is a man trying to outrun his own wounds while the past closes in on him, with each episode weaving present-day confrontation and reckoning with earlier scenes of hardship. The miniseries moves at a measured pace, building slowly toward a tense, emotionally harrowing final stretch. Its tone is raw, intimate and unflinching, mixing grief, shame and fragile hope in a grounded British kitchen sink register. Shane Meadows's gritty, character-driven approach will appeal to fans of This Is England and Shameless, and viewers who want an unsparing human drama about family damage and the search for redemption. It is a story of a single arc told in four hours, not a case-of-the-week format.

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