New Statesman - Nowhere to hide

Child offenders are denied redemption in our society, argues this powerful drama Boy A Channel 4

I am not much given to gushing but, in the case of Boy A, Mark O'Rowe's careful adaptation of Jonathan Trigell's novel about the rehabilitation of a young man who committed a murder as a child (26 November, 9pm), I find myself dangerously close to it.

In the cold light of day, I can see that the film had its flaws - I'll try to get to at least one of them in a minute - but the fact is that they were rendered all but irrelevant by the performances of Andrew Garfield as "Jack Burridge", our Boy A, and Peter Mullan as Terry, his probation officer. Mullan is always brilliant: stony and solid on the outside, but with eyes that let you know that a heart of purest marshmallow beats within.

Put him in a movie, and you've given it an axis on which to turn before the camera even rolls. But it was Garfield who stole the show (you sensed Mullan's encouragement of this, a mirroring of Terry's mentoring of Jack). Moving, assured, wholly convincing; I can't remember the last time I saw a young actor turn in a performance this good. Even his skin was the right shade of pale; he looked like a coddled plant leaving its greenhouse for the very first time.

Boy A was about second chances, and whether they are possible, not the pain of the victim's family. In flashback, we saw the girl Jack and his friend Philip had killed, but not her parents, not even in a brief courtroom scene - and some viewers will have regarded this as an unforgivable omission. I thought it a necessary sacrifice.

The film attempted to answer a question that most of us, tabloid editors and politicians included, don't care to think about too hard: what is the point of rehabilitation in a world where there are so many fatefully echoing repositories of memory, from the internet through to the Sun? It was made clear to us that the shrinks and social workers had achieved something great with Jack. He was (I'm struggling to find the right word) better. But would anyone allow him the chance to prove that this was so? While his identity was secret, Jack was a good bloke. He worked hard, he fell in love, he stuck up for his new friends at the depot where he loaded vans. Unmasked, he was a monster. The years of work, the atonement: they were now worth nothing.

Jack needed to be sympathetic for us to stick with him, so he was the less culpable of the two boys, and also the product of a broken home and the victim of school bullies (Philip's unfettered aggression appealed to him in the first instance as protection against these bullies). But it was left to Garfield to make us care about him as an adult, and he did this beautifully, capturing both the deep anxiety that comes with keeping the worst of secrets, and the sweet wonderment of freedom. In a restaurant, the menu was so bounteous, it overwhelmed. "What's a panini?" he asked Terry. "What's Mexican chicken?"

Jack often had his hand over his mouth, as if literally trying to stop the wrong words from coming out. Having grown up in a world where violence stood as a substitute for the ability to communicate, he now entered one which, though replete with small kindnesses, was just as inarticulate. When, during a night out, he kicked a man who'd picked a fight with his friend, his pals praised him for his vigour - a neat reminder of how fuzzy our attitude to violence is, of the way that context can be used both to excuse and to condemn.

But what of those flaws? Well, if I must, perhaps O'Rowe went too far when he allowed Jack to rescue a child from a car accident; with her blond hair, she even looked like an angel. But, then, as the bastards got Jack in the end, their long lenses like the barrels of guns, not even this act could bring redemption. Boy A had a devastatingly bleak ending, but the simple truth is that for as long as the mob is allowed to stoke social attitudes and government policy towards child offenders, there is every reason to feel bleak about their chances.