{"id":23612,"date":"2026-08-24T15:29:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T23:29:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23612"},"modified":"2026-08-24T15:30:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T23:30:50","slug":"time-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/08\/24\/time-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Time-Season One"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/oaX4oy36bHk?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We may never get to season two, I could barely get Felice to finish season one, that&#8217;s how intense, gritty and realistic this prison drama is. I mean I&#8217;m watching it thinking this is the best prison show I&#8217;ve ever seen. I mean there&#8217;ve been tons of movies and I did enjoy &#8220;Oz,&#8221; but plot does not supersede the vibe, the drudgery and pressure inside the walls is primary in &#8220;Time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What we&#8217;ve got here is Sean Bean as Mark Cobden, a white collar person in a blue collar jail. Cobden had an alcohol problem and killed a man and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;d think he&#8217;d go to a special prison, somewhere with people like himself. But no, he&#8217;s thrown in with the general population.<\/p>\n<p>Cobden was a teacher, and he&#8217;s recognized as such in the prison. He thinks he can keep his head down and just sleepwalk through the four years of his sentence.<\/p>\n<p>But then he starts to be bullied.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s a man who works with his mind, not his fists. And this goes on and on until the mastermind says Cobden must fight back. The intellectual mastermind, the one who looks out of place in prison, keeps a low profile but is really in charge of contraband and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>All I could think about was Trump and Carney. There comes a time when you&#8217;ve got to say no m\u00e1s, when you&#8217;ve got to stand up. And the funny thing is when you&#8217;re on the side of right, your constituency will support you. The tariffs may hurt the population of Canada, but they&#8217;re willing to stand up for what&#8217;s right, if only Americans felt the same way.<\/p>\n<p>So how does Cobden survive?<\/p>\n<p>Well, with the help of the chaplain, Siobhan Finneran, who is a staple of British television. If this were an American show, they&#8217;d end up getting it on, but that&#8217;s not a feature in real life.<\/p>\n<p>But the true star of the show is Stephen Graham, as Eric McNally, the prison officer in charge of Cobden.<\/p>\n<p>Graham is a superstar. You know him from &#8220;Adolescence.&#8221; Graham conveys his inner thoughts better than any actor out there, even Meryl Streep, and he&#8217;s more believable in his character than she ever is.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, if this were an American production, Graham would cozy up to the inmates, end up becoming friends. But that&#8217;s not what happens. He is not unduly violent, but he&#8217;s not overly compassionate either.<\/p>\n<p>And he&#8217;s not touchy-feely like today&#8217;s supposed parents. He can&#8217;t hug his son. And what is more important, his job or his family?<\/p>\n<p>So what we&#8217;ve got here is a constant owing of favors. That&#8217;s the nature of life, but it&#8217;s enforced more rigidly in prison. There&#8217;s always something you want, but you&#8217;re going to have to pay for it, even though the ask may be far in the future.<\/p>\n<p>And you expect Cobden&#8217;s wife to rise to the occasion, be supportive&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>There are no caricatures here. Everybody is an individual.<\/p>\n<p>But really, you feel the walls of the prison closing in on Cobden, and you feel it yourself. You cannot watch this show without putting yourself in it. Could you survive in the general prison population? You might think you&#8217;re special, can stay at arm&#8217;s length, just quietly do your time, but this is untrue. As for your date of exit&#8230; Is it only a matter of time before you do something to add to your sentence, if you survive at all?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s kind of like the police, the thin blue line. It&#8217;s a gang, with a hierarchy, and you&#8217;ve got to play to survive, to keep your job.<\/p>\n<p>Also, this one show is the best anti-drive while drinking advertisement I&#8217;ve ever seen. They don&#8217;t hammer the point, but if you get behind the wheel telling yourself you&#8217;re sober enough to drive&#8230; In truth, you shouldn&#8217;t get behind the wheel at all. This show will school you.<\/p>\n<p>And like the best art, you&#8217;re completely involved, not on the outside.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a nail-biter.<\/p>\n<p>But if you&#8217;re up to this kind of thing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This is what I live for, I don&#8217;t want no stinkin&#8217; fantasy, give me real life. People are people, we&#8217;re all in it together, don&#8217;t tell yourself otherwise.<\/p>\n<p>P.S. Just for the record, the second season is a different story, with women this time.<\/p>\n<p>P.P.S. This is not a huge time commitment, there are only three episodes, the cost is mostly emotional.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We may never get to season two, I could barely get Felice to finish season one, that&#8217;s how intense, gritty and realistic this prison drama is. I mean I&#8217;m watching it thinking this is the best prison show I&#8217;ve ever seen. I mean there&#8217;ve been tons of movies and I did enjoy &#8220;Oz,&#8221; but plot [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-television"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-68Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23612"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23615,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23612\/revisions\/23615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}