When you watch the acclaimed TV drama Time, remember this: I’ve seen inside our prisons and they are just as bleak | Alex South

The show depicts prisons as places characterised by violence and isolation, with no focus on rehabilitation. It’s depressingly accurate

• Alex South is a former prison officer and the author of the memoir Behind These Doors

The new series of Time is not an easy watch. The opening seconds of Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama show a normal woman on a normal bus, as it drives up a normal road. But to the right of that road is a huge concrete wall, topped with barbed wire and CCTV cameras.

The wall is only partly visible, just as prisons themselves tend to occupy a space towards the very edges of our thoughts. They exist, but not as part of normal life. But McGovern’s drama shows just how permeable that wall is.

Alex South is a former prison officer and the author of the memoir Behind These Doors