As Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones, Sophie Turner excelled as a pure soul in a morally depraved medieval universe. In lightweight but enjoyable biopic Joan, she portrays another underdog heroine once again travelling to a bygone era. Sporting a Bananarama haircut, she plays real-life 1980s jewel chief Joan Hannington, Thatcher-era London’s so-called “Criminal Godmother.”
Turner’s Hannington is Sansa with an EastEnders accent and a fashion upgrade – rather than princess frocks, it’s pastel blouses and mammoth shoulder pads.
But her Joan is also a hot streak of contradictions under the clobber and the eye makeup. She’s a loving mum but someone who will endanger her future with her daughter by stealing a car so that she can visit the child in foster care (an actual incident detailed in Hannington’s memoir, I Am What I Am: The True Story of Britain’s Most Notorious Jewel Thief). And while Turner puts great effort into playing her as an oppressed woman with a heart of gold, Joan is undeniably enthusiastic about her descent into criminality.
Joan is part giddy heist, part social drama, and the two genres combine unevenly in a series that feels torn between escapism and the desire to be something grittier.
Turner’s character is introduced as a frightened victim of an abusive criminal boyfriend, Gary (Nick Blood), who does a runner after falling out with the wrong people. Joan is left to answer for his deeds and when gangsters break in and threaten her, she puts her daughter into care and flees from the seaside town of Herne Bay in Kent to London, where she eventually bags a job selling expensive necklaces to posh women. There, she finds another calling: pinching the jewels by swallowing them whole and retrieving the stash with the help of an olive oil laxative (a scene that mercifully takes place off-camera).
Turner is best when playing Joan as a female version of George Clooney in Ocean’s Eleven. Charming and with a knack for accents, she disarms her pervy boss at the jewellers – but rather than submit to his advances, she gulps down those diamonds from the stock room and pegs it. Later, she falls in with charming antique dealer Boisie (Frank Dillane), a cad with useful underworld connections.
Where Turner struggles and Joan stutters is when it tries to go all Ken Loach. Turner struggles to get under the skin of a woman brought up in care and betrayed by all the men in her life – she lacks the acting heft. These scenes are a box-ticking exercise – it’s as if they have been included simply because they feature in Hannington’s memoir, rather than out of any genuine desire to explore Joan’s traumas.
Joan also fails to lay the groundwork for the character’s transformation into a natural-born criminal. She is introduced as the lead character in a dour kitchen sink drama. But when she overhears a posh woman nattering to a pal in a London park, she can effortlessly mimic the accent and eventually wangle her way into that jewellers job. Her display of chameleonic powers arrives completely out of the blue.
Switching between these japes and scenes of dark social realism is disconcerting, though the drama does a great job evoking 1980s London. Outrageous fashions, naff music (The Style Council feature early on), and retro cars conjure visions of fluffy dice and ZX Spectrums. It’s a fantasy version of the decade – but one which Joan explores with gusto. It’s when it tries to be bleak and realistic that the wheels come off.
‘Joan’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on ITV1
