The Trials of Jimmy Rose: Ray Winstone in a Prison Drama with a Difference

Ray Winstone is back on the small screen this week in in the second episode of his drama, The Trials of Jimmy Rose, in which the self-confessed acting ‘dinosaur’ reprises the role of a convict. But this time, its different. Well, so the 58-year-old The Departed star thinks.

Speaking about the show recently, Winstone said: “When I first read the script, I thought: ‘Oh it is another Ray Winstone coming out of prison movie…’ and then it was Adrian Shergold, who I’ve worked with four or five times before, a great director. Then I got interested in the script, because you know he’s going to make something special.”

The three-part ITV drama follows Winston’s character, career criminal Jimmy Rose, who at the series opening has spent the last twelve years in prison for armed robbery and is – to quote Winstone again – “a mixture of a lot of people [Winstone] met when [he] was a kid really” and who are still around today.

At 61, Jimmy is released back into society a free man, wanting only to be with his family – a feat that appears more difficult when the love of his life Jackie tell him she doesn’t know if she loves him anymore. Against this emotional blow, Jimmy has to face up to commitment as a husband, father and grandfather, setting out to save his granddaughter from drug addiction, only to be forced back into a life of crime that looks to cost him his marriage, his freedom and even his life. 

By coming in at this point in the protagonist’s life, Winstone says: “there was something interesting there that we could do about the older man today – the principles and morals of that generation.” In this sense, the show is as much about family, with Winstone clarifying that the exploration lay in “what [Jimmy’s] actually done to his family by being banged up for 12 years,” as opposed to his own progression and development as a criminal.

The Trials of Jimmy Rose, starring Winstone and Amanda Redman (New Tricks), continues this Sunday at 9pm on ITV, and you can watch the trailer for the series below: