The Whip review – carer turns to crime in a heist movie with a conscience

Austerity-minded MPs are the target of this likable drama, in which a struggling carer hatches an implausible plan to get her own back on the government

Here’s an austerity drama made with the best of intentions on what looks like the thriftiest of budgets; so low-budget, in fact, as to almost be homemade. It’s about the plight of carers, beginning straightforwardly enough in social realist mode with frazzled full-time carer Sadie (Shian Denovan) and her disabled sister Emily (Meg Fozzard) struggling to get by. The government is introducing new welfare reforms that will make their lives harder still, but Sadie is too exhausted to join the protests. Then, as if Ken Loach were put in charge of the Ocean’s Eleven franchise, the plot takes a lurch into heist movie territory, with Sadie cracking a plot to break into parliament.

Enter government minister Michael Harrington (Tom Knight). He’s an MP in the silver fox tradition – very posh, all eyebrows. He is suffering an attack of conscience over the new legislation. But before Harrington can resign, he gets the boot from chief whip Damian Wilson (Ray Bullock Jnr), a smirking creep who keeps in his safe a little black book filled with dirt on his party’s MPs. When Sadie watches a news segment about Wilson, she decides to steal the black book, leak it to the press and bring down the government.

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