The BBC TV series Broken will form the basis of a Church of England Lent course in the diocese of Birmingham, put together by the leading Anglican writer and academic Dr Paula Gooder.
The Lent course is in six parts based on the six episodes of the highly acclaimed 2017 series, written by Jimmy McGovern and starring Sean Bean as Father Michael Kerrigan, a troubled but respected Catholic priest in a poor area on the outskirts of a major city in northern England.
Despite suffering from anxiety and trauma about his own perceived inadequacies and his past, the extraordinary drama, which was filmed in Liverpool, shows Father Michael ministering to a wide range of brilliantly depicted characters from many walks of life.
Each session of the Lent course revolves around a character from the series: Christina, Helen, Andrew, Roz, Carl and Father Michael himself.
Dr Gooder is the director for Mission Learning and Development in the Birmingham diocese and former theologian in residence at the Bible Society.
She told Christian Today: 'The idea of the course is to encourage people to think about real life in all its grittiness and ask how they might respond from a Christian perspective, especially using what they know from the Bible to help them. To use technical language, it's an introduction to theological reflection.'
The introduction to the course says: 'The series portrays real life at its most gritty and unvarnished, and in doing so raises many questions along the way about how to live faithfully when life is very hard.'
Dr Gooder said: 'This course arose out of numerous conversations I had with people after the series aired. So many people commented that they thought it would make an excellent Lent or study course that I thought it would be interesting to have a go.
'I have shaped the course around the principles of the series itself – which raises far more questions than it ever answers. The idea of the course is to provide the space for people to pick up the questions raised in the series and to explore how they might want to answer them.'
In its leaders' notes, Dr Gooder stresses that the series is not for the faint-hearted. She writes that it 'contains disturbing story lines...It is not for the faint-hearted. The series contains lots of swearing, and themes of death, suicide, abuse, violence etc... You need to be careful about who is in your group and make sure that they know what they are coming to before you begin. The series is given a 15 rating, but I would say the themes it deals with might suggest an even higher rating.'
The course provides a list of helplines for those affected by issues and themes from the series.
Lent this year begins with Ash Wednesday on February 14. Easter Day is on April 1.
