'The Street' by Jimmy McGovern

Catching up on the TV Dramas

Now that it's the summer holidays and I've got a bit more spare time than usual, I've been enjoying catching up on some of the television dramas I recorded ages ago but hadn't got round to watching.

One of them is the drama series, 'The Street' which was the brainchild of Jimmy McGovern, the brilliant Liverpool writer who honed his craft on the Channel 4 soap, 'Brookside'.

I was fortunate enough to meet Jimmy many, many years ago when he came to run a workshop in Sheffield on writing for television. He was a very interesting man, very passionate about his writing and about the place he came from. He reminded me a lot of one of his characters, Jimmy Corkhill from Brookside as he had that same type of down-to-earth, ordinary working class bloke quality.

Dark, Thought-Provoking Stories

In creating 'The Street', Jimmy was able to put on the sort of serious dramas that used appear on Play for Today, but which no longer find a place in the television schedules among the glitz and froth of US imports. He managed to do this by creating a set of self-contained stories but having them linked into series format by virtue of the fact that all the characters live on the same street.

He deals with some very dark subject matter - a working class builder's labourer who unexpectedly begins a homosexual relationship with one of his colleagues while he's away on a job; a young man who beats up a taxi driver but leaves his innocent cousin to take the blame; a young man who is consumed by guilt because of something terrible that he did when he was twelve, something that he can't forgive himself for.

They aren't the sort of programmes you'd watch if you were interested in an escapist romp. They're not full of actors who were hired for their looks, and you won't find any posh frocks or swish sets. But they're brilliantly written and acted and they're the sort of dramas you will remember for years to come.

The series is available to buy on DVD, so if you're at all interested in serious drama, I'd urge you to buy it.