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Dan (Josh Finan, centre) surrounded by the prisoners he teaches philosophy to in Waiting for the Out. Image: BBC Studios / Sister Pictures / Sane Seven
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When we think of prison dramas, we think of gritty, chaotic, violent, dark tales. But Waiting for the Out is different. It still deals with trauma, and much of it is set inside the walls of an underfunded and overpacked men’s prison. But the focus is on a young man, Dan (rising star Josh Finan) whose father and brother both spent time in prison and who chooses to voluntarily go into prisons to teach philosophy.
The series is based on the real life of Andy West, whose 2022 memoir The Life Inside was adapted by Dennis Kelly. The name of the central character was changed midway through the writing process, to allow more freedom to deviate from real life. But the bones of the story come from West’s life.
“It’s very confronting. But I was there for that confrontation. I wanted that descent into those memories,” says West.
The memories include his childhood visits to his brother inside. And a ringside seat of his physically and emotionally abusive father in action. In Waiting for the Out, Dan is haunted by visions of his father (played by Gerard Kearns). “It’s psychologically intense, seeing parts of your childhood or your work life acted out on set and then on screen,” continues West.
“And it is difficult material. Especially some of the stuff around my dad. But that was the whole motive for writing the book. People don’t sit down and write books because they feel perfectly cheerful about their lives. Often there’s deep issues or something they’re trying to resolve, make sense of, or work through.”
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At the start of the series, we see Dan buying steel toecap boots before giving his first lesson inside the prison. But what follows is a world away from most TV and film that looks at the workings of the criminal justice system.
The Life Inside author Andy West has a cameo as a prison officer escorting Josh Finan’s Dan to his first class. Image: BBC Studios / Sister Pictures
“There’s an explosiveness to a lot of prison dramas that centre around gang issues and violence,” says Finan, who won a Bafta nomination for his role of teen tearaway Marco in The Responder before playing Gerry Adams in Say Nothing. Dan is nothing like either of those characters, as Finan proves his rare chameleonic abilities.
“That is in the DNA of Waiting for the Out. I don’t think you can get away from it – there’s a feeling that around every corner, something could happen. But it’s not the main point of the show.”
Instead, each episode features long discussions around a strand of philosophy, ostensibly led by Dan but taken on with gusto by his pupils. What led West to voluntarily enter the prison system in this way?
“I ask myself that halfway through the working day all the time, when my students are banged up and the prison is chaotic,” he says.
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“There’s a lot of human tragedy, a lot of very cynical hearts around when you’re in prison. So you do think, why am I doing this? But the prison classroom is one of the most thrilling places to me. One of the things we emphasise in the show is Dan’s failure to teach successfully and his helplessness and all of those failures are completely true.
“But when it’s right, there’s a real sense of excitement and connection and intrigue and all those great things happening as well.
“A lot of it goes back to a scene that’s in the show, and it’s from the book, of me visiting my brother when I was a kid and then coming away. You go into school on Monday and you’re the only kid who’s just been to see their brother in prison. I suppose it left me with a feeling of responsibility, a feeling of like I’ve glimpsed the edge of this kind of warzone that exists just three or four miles from ordinary society. Then I’ve come back into polite society but I can’t really forget it. It’s not something a lot of people know about. So it’s a bit of a preoccupation of mine: I should tell them.”
And why philosophy?
“I went through a journey that’s familiar to a lot of people, of being really interested in these big philosophical questions: What does it all mean?” he says. “Then you go to university and many great things happen there. I met many inspiring people. But academic philosophy is often so dreary and trivial – it’s like parlour games and the stakes get so low, you know?
“There’s something about taking philosophical questions into a prison – you very quickly see in the reaction from your students how morally or existentially urgent a given philosophical question is. So in a way it’s always kept me honest.”
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Exploring masculinity is all the rage these days. And long overdue. And Dan’s relationships with his (absent) father, his brother Lee (played by Stephen Wight) – whose battles to help others stay clear of drugs are part of his own journey away from his past – are complex and meaningful. “Dan’s dad had such, shall we say, old-school views about what a man is – and this was enforced upon Dan at a very early age. Until it stopped,” says Finan.
“So there’s a sense he may have escaped some of the more retrograde views. What I love about the character is that he’s someone who unapologetically wears a denim jacket and pink shirt to go into prison to teach philosophy.
“There’s something defiantly unconventional in that presentation of masculinity. A seeming confidence in who he is. But that is betrayed by what’s going on inside his head. Because of the – I can’t think of another word, so forgive the obviousness of this – toxic influence of his father, who haunts him.”
Ric Renton, who plays Wallace, has spent time inside. Image: BBC Studios / Sister Pictures / Sane Seven
The writers room included first time TV writer Ric Renton – who also appears in the series. He brings vital lived experience.
“I went to the university of HMP Durham, you know?” he tells Big Issue. “During my time, I was put in confinement and I asked a screw for a dictionary to pass the time. About three hours later, the food hatch opens and the dictionary comes skidding across the floor.
“So I spent three weeks down there reading the dictionary – I got to M before I was released back into the general population, then carried on. And that is the origin of me starting to write.”
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Kelly – the Bafta, Tony, Olivier and Emmy-winning writer/co-writer of such disparate greats as Matilda the Musical, C4’s Utopia, Pulling and Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy drama Together – found the story a challenge he couldn’t walk away from. “I loved the book, it was really honest, but it doesn’t exactly scream ‘TV series!’” says Kelly.
“And Andy is also a very unusual human. He goes into prison teaching philosophy to these guys. Now, I would desperately want to feel I was changing people. But Andy isn’t like that. There’s not this crusading sense within him. For him, it just has to be done.”
Kelly left school at 16 before taking an adult education course then attending Goldsmiths College. He understands, he says, the compulsion to continue to learn – and why the lessons West takes into prisons are so important.
“There’s a moment in the book where someone leaves Andy a card and it says, ‘Thanks for the holiday in the head.’ Because in prison, all you can hear is chaos. There’s two radios playing different music, all this noise, it’s mad,” says Kelly. “And people could come into his class and just get away from that for two hours and do the most human thing that you can on the planet, which is to think.”
Waiting for the Out is on Saturday nights on BBC One and on BBC iPlayer
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