The Gallows Pole, BBC2 review — a wily rogue is offered a shot at redemption

There is no room left in hell. Which is just as well for sinner David Hartley, who is given the good news by an antlered demon as he lies, breathless, bleeding and possibly hallucinating, on a hazy moor. Having been mortally stabbed, he is offered a shot at redemption: a chance to continue living and help the family and friends whom he once abandoned by putting his “wily, mucky, criminally tainted mind” to good use for a change. 

“Change” is very much the key word in The Gallows Pole, a tale of personal and social transformation that involves a counterfeit coin racket. Loosely based on Benjamin Myers’s novel, it presents a highly fictionalised account of the formation of the so-called Cragg Vale Coiners — a real group of rogues led by Hartley who began operating a forgery enterprise in the 1760s to support their destitute, prospectless Yorkshire village.

Societal decay and the desperation it breeds are the prevailing themes of series creator Shane Meadows’s class-conscious oeuvre. But in this new BBC show (co-produced by American indie darlings A24), the director wipes some of the grit from his lens. This is not a bleak, realist look at how the industrial revolution shattered small rural communities. Instead, we find a disarmingly unconventional period drama that marries a traditional moral fable with a spiky anti-establishment crime caper; allegorical visions with illicit schemes; touching communality with coarse humour. Folk and punk coexist here in perfect harmony.

Following his close escape from eternal damnation, David (the wonderfully expressive Michael Socha) arrives back home after seven years away with a stolen sack of coining equipment and a whole load of shame and self-loathing. “You’re not a bad person . . . not anymore,” he repeats to himself as a mantra. His jilted wife Grace (Sophie McShera) and younger brother William (Thomas Turgoose) initially aren’t so sure. Yet when he reveals his ingenious plan to put some much needed (fake) money in everyone’s pockets he is accepted to be less of a fiend than a guardian angel.

Before the crime soundtracked by scuzzy rock actually happens, Meadows takes his time building an authentic sense of people and place. For all the mythic embellishments, stylised slo-mo sequences and beautiful composition, the show thrums with the beats and cadences of real life. People constantly talk over one another or stumble over their words. They bicker, tease, console and confront with organic and funny delivery.

With all the excellent scenes of character development — the sweaty pub shindigs, the sweary spats and bittersweet exchanges between Grace and David — The Gallows Pole feels assuredly unhurried up until the point at which it starts to feel overly rushed. By the end, a three-episode run seems less pithy than disappointingly truncated.

★★★★☆

On BBC2 on May 31 at 9pm with new episodes airing weekly; on BBC iPlayer now