LOCKED UP. LONELY. TERRIFIED.

Can Sean Bean’s middle-class teacher survive after a devastating accident sees him thrown into prison?

PICK OF THE WEEK TIME Sunday, BBC1, 9pm

Do we really want to watch a new prison saga after a year in which we’ve all had rather too much first-hand experience of being incarcerated against our will? The answer is an emphatic yes when you take a look at the astonishing quality of the personnel involved in Time. The brilliant dramatist Jimmy McGovern (Cracker, Hillsborough) has joined forces with two of Britain’s finest leading men, Stephen Graham and Sean Bean (left), for whom the writer created the main characters in this searing three-part drama.

The star pairing alone is an exciting prospect. Graham is one of the hottest names on both sides of the Atlantic after eye-catching performances in Line Of Duty, The Virtues and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. Bean, meanwhile, has long been established as a tough action man, from Sharpe to Game Of Thrones and The Lord Of The Rings. But in an adroit change of gear, he now plays mild-mannered middleclass teacher Mark Cobden who, after accidentally killing a man, is sent to prison for four years.

Consumed with guilt for what he has done, he readily accepts his sentence – but once inside prison, this middle-aged man, who hasn’t had a fight since he was a schoolboy, finds himself terrified by the hellish world he now inhabits and wondering if he can survive in an environment run by violent criminals.

Meanwhile, Graham brings his formidable intensity to the role of Eric McNally, a prison officer of deep integrity who truly cares for the wellbeing of the inmates. Yet soon both men are confronted by forces far beyond their control, and left facing terrible sacrifices as the price of the principles they cherish.

With a cast also featuring Sue Johnston, Siobhan Finneran and Aneurin Barnard, Time yet again demonstrates McGovern’s ability to explore hard-hitting issues – in this case, crime, punishment and the state of our prisons – through gripping, must-watch drama. The storyline has a propulsive force that will keep you on tenterhooks (though the whole series is available on iPlayer immediately after episode one goes out).

The realistic depiction of prison life is grim but utterly enthralling and, most of all, McGovern’s matchless ear for dialogue leaves us feeling as if we’ve been eavesdropping on a forbidding world that we hope we’ll never experience in person.