Review of BBC Drama: stolen

Damien Lewis as DI Carter in Stolen

Jonathan and I forced ourselves to watch ‘Stolen’ a BBC drama about the trafficking of children to the UK last night.  We tend to avoid ‘work’ related TV in the evenings - I go for costume dramas, he goes for Top Gear (shamefully gender stereotypical choices I know! Jonathan adds: and in case you are wondering, I detest Jeremy Clarkson, but I like the witty banter of the show!).  Our two daughters ended up watching it too.

Everything around the issue of trafficking feels sensational and usually focuses on the sexual abuse of children. However, we were nicely surprised by this drama piece.

We were, of course, more interested in whether the drama would highlight the issue of domestic servitude.  And it did! Rosemary, an eight-year old girl from ‘Africa’ was trafficked into domestic work.  I thought her story was told very well. They highlighted her desire to go to school and the way she was punished for wearing the school uniform of one of the children she was working for – told she was bad and stupid and shoved out on the balcony.  In particular, I liked her rescue – by the cop with a heart DI Carter - she was not a grateful recipient to her saviour, she wouldn’t hug him and pushed him away - it not your typical Hollywood ending!

However, the key figure in it was of course, the cop with a heart, who was investigating the trafficking cases.  Too much of the ‘drama’ was focused on his personal life – some of which seemed completely implausible which started with bringing his daughter to play with a trafficked child (what? When he knew the ‘traffickers’ were trying to find her).  And our two daughters thought his daughter was just ‘too nice’!! The trafficker then threatening to harm DI Carter’s daughter and wife, left ‘things’ (couldn’t figure out what it was in the plastic bag on his car windscreen) and just seemed incredibly blasé about being questioned.

 Gloria Oyewumi plays child domestic worker 'Rosemary'

Two other storylines of trafficking were also told – of a boy from Vietnam who was trafficked to work in a cannabis factory and another boy from Eastern Europe who ended working in some kind of warehouse (which people slept in?). I was pleased that other situations of exploitation were shown.  And particularly pleased the drama showed that children are trafficked to WORK not simply that they are trafficked to be ABUSED.  I really liked the splitting of the screen occasionally to show where everyone was bedding down for the night – this highlighted the very different situations children can find themselves in.  However, there were a lot of question marks for me around these two storylines – who stabbed George (the boy from Eastern Europe) and why?  Which of the two boys from Vietnam was the one who escaped – the new boy or the old boy?  As a result their stories felt incomplete. It felt a little bit like the drama was originally about Rosemary, then they tagged on two other examples of trafficking but this obviously wasn’t quite enough so they added a big chunk of work-life balance tension from the cop-with-a-heart.

Having said that the acting was very good from all the cast – our hearts were with Rosemary of course – and I think we both saw children we have met reflected in her performance.