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It’s hard to imagine a better route into true philosophical inquiry than time in prison. Regret, causality, the nature of freedom: these are urgent issues to the incarcerated. Time is both impossibly empty and passing at terrifying speed. You face endless days and nights with only the inside of your head for company. You are at the sharpest end of practical philosophy, whether you like it or not. What is life for? Could it be changed for the better?
Accordingly, the teaching of philosophy in prison is entirely logical. But that depends on who is doing the teaching, and why. This magnificent six-part drama is adapted by Dennis Kelly (with both sitcom romp Pulling and conspiracy epic Utopia on his CV, Kelly is a hard man to predict) from Andy West’s memoir A Life Inside. By becoming a philosophy professor, West – recast here as Dan and brought astonishingly to life by Josh Finan – was escaping his background. But only up to a point. His father, uncle and brother all did time, while he found a different destiny. That didn’t save Andy/Dan from endless, intrusive fantasies that he was doomed to follow them anyway.
Dan is a more tormented figure than many of the prisoners. He experiences crippling OCD – indeed, his relentlessly checked, photographed and filmed gas cooker probably deserves a Bafta nomination for the implacable yet weirdly expressive shift it puts in here – and is haunted by imaginary encounters with his long-estranged father. Is he that man? Where do questions around nature and nurture land in relation to him? Once we meet Dan’s father, it’s easy to see how that could become a preoccupation.
We flash back to the family car, setting off on a seaside holiday. The pre-pubescent Dan is in the back seat. His brother Lee (more of whom later) is nowhere to be seen. Dad is singing My Way, very aggressively. Dad then proceeds to do it his way for the brief duration of the trip. This means bullying a waiter, drunkenly threatening violence against his family and stealing display jewellery from a shop. His toxic combination of menace and weakness is superbly realised by Gerard Kearns (one of many brilliant performances here). This is Dan’s biological legacy.
So to prison. As he begins the job, Dan’s insecurities are clear – he’s bought some steel toe-capped boots in a doomed attempt to project masculinity. While he waits for his first class, his father – who we learn is in prison himself – appears to him. “They won’t get you, boy,” he snarls. “These are fucking men.”
But eventually, they do get him. If anything, one or two of them get him slightly too well. It isn’t always the case with dramas set in prisons but these inmates are thoroughly well-written and performed characters, who work wonders with their limited screen-time. Well read, abrasive Keith (Alex Ferns) in particular is potentially Dan’s worst nightmare – his intellectual equal but with jailbird smarts thrown in; a troubling mixture of his world and that of his father. Keith’s nose for bullshit is amusingly acute – at one point he describes Slavoj Zizek as “the Billy Connolly of philosophy”. But his instinct for Dan’s weak spots is dangerous.
Dan’s life outside work is an odyssey too. He burns through relationships. He memorably ruins a middle-class dinner party in at least three different ways. But at the heart of the story is his beautifully drawn relationship with his brother Lee (Stephen Wight). As a recovering addict and former prisoner, Lee has been through the mill. Even so, he’s comparatively well-adjusted; comfortable in his own skin. He’s walked in his father’s shoes, and accordingly, doesn’t share Dan’s compulsive curiosity about him. Lee is practically altruistic – the pair spend a night on the druggy trail of a young addict he is mentoring – but he doesn’t understand Dan’s need to see prison from the inside.
At certain points, Waiting for the Out could lapse into patronising cliches. Thankfully, it sidesteps them. Is Dan being taught valuable life lessons by these rough diamonds? Not really. Dan is a mess and his life threatens to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But so are the inmates. Philosophy is a rock to cling to – not as a source of certainty but as an affirmation of chaos. It allows them to hide but it allows them to explore themselves too. The inmates assume he’s gay (they don’t care) and Dan doesn’t correct them. As a warder points out; “You’re living as a closeted heterosexual”. This environment is harsh but it’s counter-intuitively tolerant too. The only taboo is judging others – after all, that’s already happened and they’ve been found wanting.
In the end, this is a gripping, moving study in vulnerability and acceptance. The prisoners open up and eventually, so does Dan. In doing so, they admit the capacity for change. Are we simply helpless victims (or indeed, lucky beneficiaries) of the circumstances we inherit? With a mixture of exquisite lightness and overwhelming heaviness, Waiting for the Out suggests that it’s never too late. We can still write our own stories.
Waiting for the Out aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.
