Master of misery

Four times the hard-hitting Stephen Graham didn’t miss

If you are yearning for feel-good television that spreads a warm glow of sunshine and contentment, you would be advised to give a wide berth to anything involving Stephen Graham.

Connoisseurs of bleak horror and punch-to-the-gut dramas, on the other hand, have the greenlight to flick through this British actor’s catalogue of work, be it in A Thousand Blows, Time, Peaky Blinders, or even that outlier, Matilda: The Musical. You are now in safe hands as you set forth on your journey of utter misery.

Graham has neither the height nor the smooth jaguar-in-a-cello voice of, say, Benedict Cumberbatch. To any vertically challenged young men dismayed that they may never make it as a serious television actor, however, Graham is the exception that proves the rule. He is a dyslexic five-foot-five Scouser whose wife (actor Hannah Walters) acts as a gatekeeper for all scripts to ensure he will be able to take them on in the first place. In deference to those who balk at the feel-good and feast on a healthy dose of suffering, here are four roles where Graham’s performances seek to consume you.

‘Adolescence’

Those who have sat through Graham’s gut-wrenching performance in Netflix’s Adolescence will have some inkling as to the depths of pain this man can portray. In Adolescence, Graham plays Eddie Miller, a father whose life is torn apart after his son Owen’s cut-and-dried partaking in a horrific crime. Eddie is called on to accompany Owen’s opening few hours into the police system. Like any shell-shocked father, Eddie goes through the motions and is pinned back in sheer helplessness as he watches Owen forced to confront the undeniable evidence that nobody else can be behind this violent murder.

Through Graham’s eyes, we are yanked into the world of a man tortured by regret, aching to turn the clock back and set things right, and splintering apart as he struggles to hold the fort at home for his wife and daughter. Whether Graham’s Eddie is right or wrong in his insistence on keeping up a patriarchal facade is not what is up for debate today. What remains incontestably true is that in addition to just his voice, Graham’s eyes, face, hands, and even his walk do the talking, and suck us into Eddie’s vortex of pain. With his Scouse accent offering a breath of fresh air mixed with grit, Graham’s take on Eddie seals the deal and helps mold Adolescence into the raw, can’t-look-away experience it has become on social media.

‘Time’

Speaking of fathers with errant sons, Graham plays a prison warden Eric McNally in the BBC show Time – but with a twist. His (adult) son is housed in another prison. Unfortunately for them both, one of Eric’s inmates gets wind of this interesting fact and begins issuing all sorts of threats to get his way. These threats entail this troublesome inmate circulating word amongst his criminal buddies in order to get Eric’s son beaten up in his own prison – an action that Eric, predictably, does not take to kindly. We see his worry in a phone call from his son at home, and we witness what he is prepared to do to the man who dares to mess with his boy.

Through Eric’s eyes, we get a visceral view of life in the prison system, and the lengths that a father will go to protect his son, albeit stripped of the tired tropes frequently paraded on prison-oriented dramas. If you choose to watch Time, be warned: there is no reprieve, no moments of light, no escape until the credits roll. It is a harrowing ride without a single instance of weakness from an impeccable cast that also includes Sean Bean. Via Eric, Graham shows us just how much of a ‘tough guy’ he has the potential for, proving that conventional good looks have nothing to do with a stellar performance.

‘Matilda: The Musical’

Adolescence is not the only time Graham takes on the mantle of a flawed father; in Matilda the Musical, he morphs into the detestable Mr Wormwood, the gifted Matilda’s utterly undeserving father. Where Eddie from Adolescence was flawed but ultimately understandable, this particular Mr Wormwood – as intended by the character’s original creator, Roald Dahl – is flawed and as morally bankrupt as it is humanly possible.

Shedding his natural Liverpudlian accent to take on the voice of a Cockney mechanic who swindles customers via dodgy cars, Graham struts about the set in the most ridiculous suits. With this being a musical, it would be inconceivable that he would be able to escape singing – and he doesn’t. Nevertheless, for this man used to playing an onscreen (non-singing) tough guy, being in Matilda was non-negotiable.

“My daughter told me if I didn’t do it, she’d disown me,” Graham told Time Out in 2022 before the film was released.

It is slightly disconcerting to watch Graham take on the mantle of a man swaggering on the side of wrong with such reckless abandon. Unlike Danny DeVito’s version of Mr Wormwood from the 1996 film, whom you could not help but nurse a small corner for in your heart, Graham’s Mr Wormwood’s cruelty to Matilda spikes new levels of hatred for this wretched, horrid father. Embodying the full spirit of the source novel, Matilda: The Musical is far darker than DeVito’s take on Dahl’s beloved classic, and Graham’s seamless slipping into Mr Wormwood’s skin makes this as uncomfortable watch as can be allowed.

‘A Thousand Blows’