Life In Pieces

Sheridan Smith and Alison Steadman star in a powerful drama about a family suddenly faced with serious illness…

- Caren Clark

From a murdered wife in The Widower to a cancer sufferer in The C Word, Sheridan Smith has played some harrowing roles in her time – but perhaps none more so than her latest part in BBC1’s moving one-off drama Care, which explores the emotional strain of looking after a sick loved one.

Written by Jimmy McGovern and Gillian Juckes, who was inspired by her own experiences, it sees Smith play mother-of-two and supermarket cashier Jenny, whose life is torn apart when her widowed mother Mary, played by Gavin & Stacey star Alison Steadman, suffers a stroke while driving her granddaughters home.

Jenny and her sister Claire (Little Boy Blue’s Sinead Keenan) are left reeling at the change in their mother, who is paralysed down one side, unable to speak coherently and has brain damage.

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