The Mark of Cain, Channel 4

Bloody, battered faces acted almost like bookends for Tony Marchant’s drama The Mark of Cain. At the start they were those of Iraqi detainees abused by British soldiers. At the end it was that of a British squaddie, beaten by members of his regiment for having broken ranks to confess everything and name names during a court martial. No wonder the Ministry of Defence didn’t want this screened. As it turned out, Channel 4 postponed its scheduled transmission last week amid the then unresolved crisis regarding the British military personnel held in Iran. It went out last night with the MoD still facing the flak for allowing the released sailors and Marines to sell their stories to the press. Clearly, the military is trying to adjust to the full glare of the media while still on active service.

From the soldier’s point of view, according to one of Marchant’s squaddies: “We barely get a mention if we’re killed but we’re headline news if something goes wrong.” Marchant offered a sympathetic portrait of the daily pressures faced by soldiers on patrol. We saw Shane and Mark, lifelong friends and 18-year-old raw recruits, out of their depth amid baying mobs, roadside bombs and the uncertainty of who’s friend or foe, during their first tour of duty in Basra in 2003.

Having witnessed the compromises of their peacekeeping role through the beating of a smuggler to pacify an angry mob, the rookies then saw their unit stoked up by the death of two platoon members ambushed by insurgents. Retaliation seemed sanctioned by the unit’s superiors — “You walk away from this,” Shane warned Mark, “and it’ll be the same as deserting” — and the abuse of two prisoners followed, their brutal humiliation shockingly revealed in more detail towards the end as Shane stood in the dock.

Marchant’s work picks away at questions of personal responsibility, whether it’s the recent Recovery (Sarah Parish faced with looking after a brain-injured husband, David Tennant), The Family Man (IVF consultant Trevor Eve playing God with childless couples) or Passer-by (James Nesbitt failing to rescue a girl who’s being raped). The Mark of Cain was also looking for the root cause of moral failure in individuals and society. Marchant saw Mark and Shane as victims of a brutalising army culture of peer pressure, misplaced loyalty and a pack mentality as their comrades closed ranks and left them to take the rap after Shane’s “trophy” photographs rebounded on them back home.

Nowadays, finding a TV drama that hasn’t been built around a murder-mystery or conceived as a vehicle for David Jason is a cause for celebration. Tautly directed by Marc Munden, The Mark of Cain conveyed powerfully how a peacekeeping force can easily adopt a retaliatory position as violence breeds violence. It also boasted fine performances, including Matthew McNulty as Shane, Gerard Kearns as Mark, whose disintegration and eventual suicide was painful to watch, and Shaun Dooley as their career-soldier corporal, a troubling voice of moral relativism, orchestrating the unit’s actions. This had the power to raise compassion and indignation.

Yet the opening caption — “This film is based on extensive research but is a dramatic work of fiction” — kept gnawing at me. Of the events before us, what had been taken from definite events and what from rumour or suspicion? Marchant had clearly been inspired by documented cases, even prefiguring a six-month court martial covering similar abuse charges that delayed the film’s original transmission last year. So why didn’t he come up with a straight drama-documentary that would have clarified the division between fact and dramatic licence?

You could argue that Marchant is fulfilling a dramatist’s role of raising issues for debate, like David Hare’s Iraq plays and Gregory Burke’s stage hit Black Watch , based on the verbatim accounts of regimental disillusionment in Iraq. And The Mark of Cain was welcome for illustrating powerfully how one slides into brutality. But you had to regard this as a polemical drama that depicted nearly every authority figure, whether officer, padre or army doctor, as either a moral coward or uncaring villain. This was the British Army of Deepcut. Where was the comradeship that can make soldiers love each other more than their families?

In the end this offered a selective view bathed in an aura of authenticity that could have been taken as the whole picture. Sure, the film stated again in the final credits that this was fiction. But that was in the small print — and who really reads that?

Wake up to Coma TV

In Ashes to Ashes, the sequel to Life on Mars, a comatose modern-day female detective will conjure up Gene Hunt and the boys in 1981 London. What, another coma? Then again, perhaps a comatose House (Hugh Laurie) could clash with the squeaky-clean 1960s medics of Dr Kildare. Or someone from Corrie could share a pint with Ena Sharples. And we could go back to Last of the Summer Wine in the 1970s. Or perhaps not — nothing would have changed.

Having a celebrity flutter

Don’t miss the BBC’s Grand National coverage tomorrow as Clare Balding sniffs out the celebrity punters. Two years ago, Peter Kay rubbed shoulders with Cilla Black and Cliff Richard. Last year, Johnny Vegas provided some choice ramblings: “My gentleman breasts encourage the horse to run faster. The horse feels younger, like it was being fed, by a mother sat aloft.” Let’s hope Eddie Izzard is on hand to keep up the surreal commentary this year.

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