Keys was portrayed by Academy Award-nominated actor Tim Roth and the programme was scripted by Jimmy McGovern.[1][2] Talking on BBC radio programme Front Row in June 2016 about creating the drama, McGovern said: "I first thought about it over eight years ago and I went down to see Reg and I tried to start it, but for some reason I just couldn't seem to start it. But it was always at the back of my mind: 'I know I've got to tell this man's story'".[3] Of his main protagonist, McGovern has said "It was an honour to meet Reg Keys. He is a truly remarkable man, and it has been a privilege to tell this part of his story."[2]
In The Daily Telegraph Jasper Rees found Reg to be "a meticulous autopsy of a vast insult to the British body politic", noting "McGovern knows where to find the drama in stories of private grief battling institutional indifference" and adding "This was a quiet portrait of simmering rage, sometimes a bit too quiet. […] The Keys' Brummie [sic][6] stoicism was the cause of much understated acting – Roth was doggedly undemonstrative, Maxwell Martin temperate and reserved."[7]
Writing in The Guardian, Lucy Mangan began by saying "I don't know where Jimmy McGovern gets the emotional energy or resilience from, I really don't" before judging that "There wasn't a weak moment in the film". Mangan found Anna Maxwell Martin "as quietly stellar as always" and that "Roth was extraordinary as a man scoured out by grief and left with only a single purpose to pursue. Implacable, purged of all need or desire for lesser considerations or emotions by his loss, he gave us a man and a performance boiled down to its very essence. There is nothing more honestly, nakedly powerful or moving. Thank you."[8]
