Anthony review: The powerful story that could have been for murder victim Anthony Walker

‘Anthony’ traverses, in reverse, an imagined expanse of seven years, looking at the potential that was robbed from 18-year-old Anthony Walker when he was murdered in a vicious racist attack in 2005

On 30 July 2005, 18-year-old Anthony Walker was murdered in a vicious racist attack at a bus stop near his home in Liverpool. He was, by all accounts, a kind student; a loving son; a funny brother; a church leader; a gifted basketball player; an aspiring lawyer. Anthony, the new BBC One feature-length drama, embarks on the impossible task of conveying the depth of this monumental loss in just 90 minutes. And through its use of unconventional storytelling, the film succeeds – at least as much as any dramatisation possibly could.

Anthony tells the story that could have – should have – been. It traverses, in reverse, an imagined expanse of seven years, beginning with a 25-year-old Anthony (Toheeb Jimoh) accepting an award for his charity work, before rolling back the years one by one until the night of his murder.

It’s a conceit that may have felt trite had it not been in the hands of Jimmy McGovern and Anthony’s mother, Gee Walker. McGovern, known for hard-hitting dramas like Hillsborough and The Street, has known Walker for years; she often acts as his informal advisor when he writes grieving characters. When she asked McGovern to write about Anthony’s story, he said it was his “God-given duty” to accept.

“When the judge passes a sentence of life, we are the ones who are sentenced to a life of ‘what’ or ‘how’?” Gee Walker told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We wonder what he’d be doing now. We are the ones who are left with this abyss of pain and wondering.”

And for the duration of the film, this “abyss” is temporarily filled. A fictional life is fleshed out and rendered in colour, signposted by milestones signifying the chronological years: meeting and marrying the love of his life, witnessing the birth of his child, earning a job at a barristers’ chambers. But no tableau lasts long. You’ve only just become acquainted with a new storyline before the scene cuts and Anthony is robbed of another year, propelled backwards one year closer to his murder. You find yourself furiously willing time to stop.

As Anthony, the 23-year-old Jimoh is gut-wrenching. He acts with charm and charisma, and crucially, without empty veneration. Between the landmark events, Jimoh imbues Anthony with everyday humanity instead: crying, laughing, flirting, playing basketball, joking around. And he is allowed flaws; in one scene he yells at his sister for her “tarty” outfit before he apologises for “being a knob”.

The murder scene itself is expectedly horrific, but it’s also short. Because this is not a film concerned with Anthony’s racist murderers, nor is it a crime thriller. Police officers do not make an appearance; it is the nurse who prays hand in hand with Anthony’s mother in hospital who offers institutional support.

The fulfilled potential played out on screen is a powerful message of what was lost. But it is also just a single iteration of the infinite possibilities which awaited Anthony. In 90 minutes, we experience just one of his innumerable lives; we are temporarily exposed to the never-ending thoughts which plague Anthony’s loved ones: their “life sentence” of never knowing what could have been.