Field of Blood

The Field of Blood is a novel by Denise Mina, set in early 1980’s Glasgow, adapted into two one hour features for BBC by David Kane, who also directs. The cast list comes straight from Still Game. They play the kind of reporters on a Daily rag that you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night: hard drinking, free smoking, no good fucks who think compassion is some kind of new drink. In other words, spot on. Peter Capladi is lurking in the back ground, so I’d expect him to emerge in the next and last episode.

Paddy Meehan played by Jayd Johnson is the star. She is the innocent, the ‘copy-boy,’ among the jaded. There is something in her enthusiasm to be a journalist that touches her gruff copy-editor boss (David Morrisey). In echoes of the Bulger case a young boy has been abducted and murdered by another child; in this case the police have arrested Paddy’s prepubescent nephew and charged him with the murder. The allusion to the wrongful arrest and conviction of Paddy Meehan is touched on in the dialogue. Subtler is the allusion ‘Field of Blood’ to the temptation of Christ. Paddy is shown the riches of the newspaper world and told it could be hers. Similarly, the echo of the field bought by the 30 pieces of silver by Judas, sits under the Irish Catholic surface of dying grannies and Rosary beads. (Or maybe that's just my life?) The authorities and her newspaper colleagues are baying for the boy in custody’s blood. Paddy, however, has begun her own investigation. She makes a link between the current murder and an identical case in which a father, she believes, was wrongly convicted of the murder of his son. Paddy’s naivety in claiming the identity of an older, more experience colleague, who had betrayed her earlier, leads to the latter’s murder, when she tries to use Paddy’s sources again. The language is a joy.