Save Me

Give it time and you'll be rewarded

A total of 5,145 potential victims were referred into the system in 2017, an increase of 35 per cent on the year before, and the National Crime Agency (NCA) believes the number will continue to rise.

Suspected labour exploitation was the most frequently cited category, accounting for 2,352 cases - nearly half of all referrals. Other reports were linked to suspected sexual exploitation (1,744) and domestic servitude (488).

• "British children being forced into modern slavery in UK as 5,000 potential victims found" (Lizzie Dearden); Th__e Independent (March 26, 2018)

Nelson "Nelly" Rowe (Lennie James) is a popular self-styled womaniser living on a Deptford council estate in London, whose life is turned upside down when he is arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his thirteen-year-old daughter Jody (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness), whom he hasn't seen in ten years. After convincing the police of his innocence, and frustrated with the way the case is progressing, Nelly decides to take matters into his own hands and try to track down Jody himself.

From a plot perspective, the first season of Save Me starts very slowly, but what it does do extremely well is build up a background of small details that help establish the milieu as authentic and lived-in. The housing estate in Deptford is essentially a character in itself, and the glimpses of the denizens going about their idiosyncratic ways gives an almost documentarian tone – from the guy doing tai chi on his balcony to the kids kicking a football at one another, to the young lesbian couple stealing a kiss against a wall, to the meditating Buddhist, to the couple dancing slowly on a basketball court, to the woman in a burka carrying a skateboard, to the older folk watching it all happen day after day, it's a paean to the real lives that people lead in this kind of community. Indeed, one of the most consistent themes is the importance community in general. E...