Anthony, BBC 1, 8.30pm. BBCiPlayer, Writer Jimmy McGovern and Director.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lb9c/anthony

I’m a fan of writer Jimmy McGovern's work rooted in Merseyside and working-class life. His production company can pretty much sell what he produces to the BBC. His focus here is the murder of eighteen-year-old Anthony Walker. A black kid murdered by an ice-pick through his head in a Liverpool park, in an unprovoked racist attack in 30^th July 2005. His two assailants received life sentences. The most convincing part of the drama is how this happened and the aftermath of the tragedy.

Toheeb Jimoh is given the role of Anthony in a sliding-doors moment of what would have happened had he lived in a life told backwards from his mid-twenties. The girl he would have married, Katherine, nee Dooley, Walker (Julia Brown), the children they would have had, the people he would have helped. Anthony wanted to be a civil-rights lawyer and work in America. It all comes dramatically true here, but in a less than convincing way.  Too much sugar makes poor drama.