[2] Brought up a Catholic, he attended St Francis Xavier's College which moved to the Woolton suburb of Liverpool in 1961.
In 1993, he created the drama serial Cracker, about the work of a fictional criminal psychologist played by Robbie Coltrane.
In 1997 he created The Lakes, a drama that shared Brookside's realist setting and reused themes from Cracker, such as gambling addiction.
McGovern also wrote the script for the television docudrama Hillsborough (1996), based on the events of the stadium disaster in 1989, which claimed the lives of 97 Liverpool fans at an FA Cup semi-final.
The six-part series follows a similar format to Accused, telling the stories of six inner-city households in one street whose lives are changed by a seemingly insignificant incident.
[7] In June 2021, McGovern's series Time, starring Sean Bean and Stephen Graham, aired on BBC One.
[9] McGovern wrote the book for the musical stage show King Cotton, which explores links between the Atlantic slave trade and industrialisation in North West England, as part of the Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008.
McGovern has openly criticised dramas such as Footballers' Wives lamenting the lack of quality, believable storytelling in the early 2000s.