Boys From The Blackstuff

Just watched the Shop Thy Neighbour episode of the classic Boy From The Blackstuff serial of 1982 vintage; utterly brilliant scriptwriting and realistically acted. The series is contemporily set amidst the recession-hit Liverpool of Margaret Thatcher's Britain.

Michael Angelis plays Chrissie, an out of work and increasingly desperate tarmac-layer; Julie Walters plays his also-suffering wife.

After doing some work whilst claiming dole-money (Unemployment Benefit payments) with his friend, Loggo, Chrissie and Loggo are summoned to the Benefits Office and find they will be done for fraud, by smug officials.

Chrissie and Angie's gas supply is disconnected because he can't afford to pay the bill. Chrissie and Angie are increasingly arguing and bickering throughout the episode. Their Benefit Office tail makes himself known to Chrissie and quits his job as it makes him feel like a low-life snitching on skint people trying to get by on jack-shit.

Things become increasingly fraught between Chrissie and Angie, culminating in Chrissie going into the back yard with a double-barrel and shooting his geese, blood splattering himself, Angie and their kid's rabbit, and them both collapsing in tears. Chrissie finishes the episode by say that he'd better clean the blood off the rabbit (a reference to when Angelis played Lucien, who was obsessive about his rabbits, in The Liver Birds).

Like I said at the start of this blog, it's absolutely fantastic and, very probably, Alan Bleasdale's best writing.

This is one of the must-see serials of the Eighties and is nearly as fresh, controversial and ground-breaking today as it was then. *****