Secret Life is a powerful feature-length single drama that seeks to explore how children can be safeguarded from convicted child sex offenders and it questions the lack of effective measures in place to prevent them from re-offending after prison.

The drama charts the story of Charlie (Matthew Macfadyen, Spooks, Pride and Prejudice). In his early thirties, Charlie is white, middle class and a child sex offender who has served his prison sentence but who, by his own admission, continues to pose a significant danger to children. When the rehabilitation centre he has elected to attend is shut down he is cast adrift in the local community, without guidance or psychological treatment, to struggle alone with his compulsion to re-offend.

Writer/director Rowan Joffe (who wrote C4’s Gas Attack, Last Resort) was prompted to write the drama after watching a news bulletin about the closure of the last rehabilitation centre for child sex offenders in the UK.

Rowan comments: “In writing and directing Secret Life, I hope it serves two purposes; firstly, to engage us in an authentic drama, an internal and individual struggle, for want of two better words, between good and evil. Secondly, that the drama seeks to ask difficult social questions: What do we do with Britain’s paedophiles? Should we lock them up and throw away the key? Or would more residential centres be a more practical solution.”

Channel 4 commissioning editor for drama, Liza Marshall said: “Part of Channel 4’s role is to tackle difficult subjects and I hope this sensitive, insightful drama contributes to a measured debate. Secret Life will join a raft of Channel 4 drama commissions from Abi Morgan’s award winning Sex Traffic to Michael Winterbottom’s The Road to Guantanamo, that have sought to reflect pertinent contemporary issues through intelligent, authored fiction.”

Thursday 19 April at 9pm on Channel 4