Jeff Pope’s dramatisation of the fatal shooting of 11-year-old Rhys Jones excelled at turning bad news into good drama
Sonny Beyga as Rhys Jones with Sinéad Keenan as his mother, Mel
A football ground tribute to someone who has just died is always a moving thing, partly because of the scale of collective feeling. It was hard not to choke up at the minutes’ applause for Ugo Ehiogu, who died too young, at Villa Park and Wembley at the weekend.
The one in Little Boy Blue (ITV) is a reconstruction: 39,000 Everton fans gave up their half-time break at a recent match to applaud 11-year-old Rhys Jones, younger than too young, as actors playing his parents and brother stood by the side of the pitch.
But it is also very real. They’re not just thousands of extras; they are playing themselves, standing to applaud the boy who was gunned down so needlessly and tragically, just as they did nearly 10 years ago. The spirit is absolutely real. Rhys’s memory lives strong at Goodison Park. And it’s incredibly moving. More choking up – in the stands, I’m sure; certainly on this side of the screen.
To be honest I was in bits pretty much from the off. The first urgent banging on the door of the Jones family home is Rhys himself, played by a young Scouser named Sonny Beyga. He needs his subs for football practice. The second banging, more urgent still, is one of Rhys’s coaches, telling mum Mel she needs to come because her son has been shot.
The next time we see Rhys, he’s lying on the ground of the pub carpark in an expanding pool of blood. Mel is cradling him, whispering in his ear: “You stay here with me, all right?”
Dad Steve joins them in hospital. They are stroking his feet, as doctors cannulate and intubate, inject adrenaline and pump away at his little chest. “Come on love, come on Rhys, we’re here, we’re here Rhys.”
Rhys doesn’t make it, of course, though unsurprisingly Mel can’t accept it. The last time we – and they – see Rhys, he’s lying in the hospital morgue, head on an Everton pillow, an Everton sheet over his body. Can they go in, Mel asks. “I can’t bear him being on his own in there.”
They are allowed in, so long as they don’t touch, as the body is still important evidence. But of course Mel has to stroke his hair, kiss her little boy again on the forehead, for the last time, even though the policewoman is threatening to arrest her. “Arrest me?” she cries. “He’s my son, you can’t tell me not to touch him.”
It’s an extraordinary scene and performance – an amazing portrait of the intensity of a mother’s grief from Sinead Keenan. Also from Brían F O’Byrne, as dad Steve – quieter, more bottled up, and touchingly grateful, thanking the doctors, and the porter who provided the Everton stuff.
Written by Jeff Pope – who has become a specialist in turning bad news into good drama (he produced The Moorside and Appropriate Adult) – Little Boy Blue is not just about the tragedy of Rhys’s death and the grief of his family. However gut-wrenching, that wouldn’t stretch to four parts. It’s also about the investigation, led by DS Dave Kelly (Stephen Graham, who manages to be kind and very human as well as convincingly cop-like). It’s about the pressure the investigation was under to deliver results, and how it very nearly didn’t, due to lack of evidence. It’s about knowing who did it – because everyone knew who did it, and said so, anonymously, because of fear – but not being able to prove it. It’s about the frustration of a thousand “no comment” responses from cocky, closely-shorn gang members in the interview room, and their families closing ranks around them. It’s about gang rivalry, how it can escalate and go badly wrong.
And it’s about the city of Liverpool too; how it was affected by Rhys’s murder. And also about a more positive sort of looking after your own, of how a community was united both in shock and against the causes of the tragedy.
Dave and Mel, Rhys’s parents, weren’t just open to and then pro the project; they became involved, reading the script, meeting the actors. And that goodwill towards it spread, to DS Dave Kelly and to the entire city of Liverpool. In fact, the only person I can find who has been less keen is the gang member thought to have been the intended target of the bullet.
Special shout out to the fans of Everton, of course. Giving up half-time might not sound like much, but 15 minutes multiplied by 39,000 – that’s well over a year of free good-will. And among them, in the crowd, clapping, were the real Owen and Steve Jones, Rhys’s brother and dad. More tissues please.
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