Colman portrays a mother with a tough decision

Channel 4 brings you a brand new edge of your seat series called “Run.” This series brings you four stories that are connected with one story line, running away from serious problems that are actually based on true events.

This series portrays modern British life and the unseen dramas which play out all around us with an all-star cast including: Jaime Winstone (Kidulthood, Made in Dagenham), Neil Maskell (The Football factory, Kill List) , Kate Dickie (Game Of Thrones, Prometheus), Benedict Wong (Sunshine, Prometheus) and Olivia Colman (Broadchurch, Peep show). The series is also directed by the brilliant Charles Martin who also directed Being Human.

The first episode focuses on Carol (Olivia Colman) and her two sons who live on a council estate and clearly haven’t got a bright future ahead of them. She’s portrayed as a hard working mother who defends her sons, who are lazy and live off their mother whilst they should be out looking for a job. One of the sons is very violent to his ex-girlfriend but Carol chooses to ignore it.

However, as the story carries on, Carol’s two sons beat an innocent man to death for no reason. At this exact moment, she doesn’t know that her two sons are killing this man and carries on with her normal life. She ends up nicking stuff from work in order to buy stuff for her and her sons and sells it to the next character that will appear in the next episode.

One night, as Carol gets ready to go out, she comes across blood stains on one of her son’s clothes and begins to realise that they both were involved in this murder. She calls on their father Kieran (Neil Maskell) who she isn’t with anymore and begs him for help. However he ends up getting violent, we all sort of understand where her two sons get it from. Towards the end she is left with no choice and calls the police which results in both of them getting arrested and leaving Carol in tears and guilt of handing her two sons in.

The first episode of Run could cause a lot of debate about mothers who would protect their own no matter what happens. Some people would say that she did her best by protecting her two murdering sons; and then others would say that she did the right thing by reporting them to the police. I for one strongly believe that Carol did the right thing! No matter if they are your children or not, if they committed the crime then they should do the time. It was clever aswell to show that another side of her didn’t want to do it.

Mothering her two sons who should have a job by now and lives with her (which might bring her to blame herself for being too overly protective with them). No matter what the outcome is, it’s still hard for a parent to be put in that position. I know without a doubt that if that was my mother, then she would from march me or my brother to the police station for our own good.

However it did annoy me at the beginning because I can’t stand it when certain mothers who sit there and say things like “Oh my not boys. They’re angels.” And funnily enough, there are idiotic mothers like that, and I strongly believe that if they do say things like that, then they seriously should be taking up parental classes or simply don’t be a mother at all.

Olivia Colman deserves an award for this episode! For an actress who goes from comedy and then serious drama and pulls it off like that, then they are truly amazing! She played a typical wimpy mother who showed so much love to her boys who committed a crime and thought to herself “No more! You both need to pay!” but done it out of love which made it stronger.

Run deserves a massive 10/10. And I am very excited about the next three episodes!