Irish Examiner view: ITV's Hillsborough drama is about ordinary people rising up

Dramatic retelling of the aftermath of the Hillsborough soccer stadium disaster will seek to inspire viewers

Anne Williams (left) who lost her son in the Hillsborough disaster at an FA Cup semi-final in 1989 is portrayed by Maxine Peake in 'Anne', a four-part series on ITV starting at 9pm on Thursday. Picture montage: ITV/PA

The ramifications and reverberations from the Hillsborough football stadium disaster 33 years ago this April continue to provide a testament to the human determination to achieve both justice and truth.

This will be writ large in a new TV series, which starts next Thursday, when Maxine Peake, one of the grittiest and most highly political of actors, undertakes the role of Anne Williams, the shopkeeper from Formby in Lancashire whose teenage son Kevin was among the 97 victims of the crush at the Sheffield Wednesday ground when it hosted an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. A further 766 people were injured, while 79 of those killed were aged between 10 and 29.