BBC 4 TV Tonight 21:35... The series Boys from the Blackstuff follows the stories of the five now unemployed men who lost their jobs due to the events of the original play The Blackstuff. Set in Bleasdale's home city of Liverpool, and reflecting many of his own experiences of life in the city, each episode focuses on a different member of the group. The series was highly acclaimed for its powerful and emotional depiction of the desperation wreaked by high unemployment and a subsequent lack of social support. Although the series is and was noted by many reviewers as a critique of the Margaret Thatcher era, which was seen as being responsible for the fate of many of the unemployed lower and working classes, particularly in the North of England (and in fact fuelling the North-South divide), most of the series had actually been written in 1978 during Labour's James Callaghan's prime ministership, therefore preceding Thatcher's Britain by a year.

Indeed the most memorable and poignant of the characters was Yosser Hughes, a man driven to the edge of his sanity by the loss of his job, his wife, the authorities' continued attempts to take his children away from him and his constant attempts at salvaging his male pride (often the main give-away of his insecurity). His catchphrases, "Gizza' job!" ("give us a job") and "I can do that!" became part of the popular consciousness of the Eighties, summing up the mood of many who sought desperately for work during the era. Hughes was played by Bernard Hill, who uses his obvious Mancunian accent, with slight Scouse vocal mannerisms. He subsequently went on to find fame acting in various films and television series, such as a lead role in the 1988 film Drowning By Numbers and including appearances in the blockbuster movies Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–03).

The serial also helped to establish the career of Julie Walters, who played the most prominent female role as Angie, the wife of Chrissie, played by Michael Angelis.

The serial was notable for being a high-profile production made not by the BBC's central drama department in London, but by the English Regions Drama department based at BBC Birmingham, although it was shot on location in Liverpool. The producer was Michael Wearing, who was based at Birmingham with a specific remit to make 'regional drama', and who would later be instrumental in bringing the equally influential BBC drama serials Edge of Darkness (1985) and Our Friends in the North (1996) to the screens. The writer Alan Bleasdale went on to pen many more acclaimed television dramas, of particular note being The Monocled Mutineer (BBC1, 1986) and G.B.H. (Channel 4, 1991)
[edit] Reception

The series was so successful upon its original broadcast that only nine weeks after it had finished transmission, it was re-shown on the higher-profile BBC1 (also for the benefit of those who were still watching on 405-line TV sets, which were incapable of receiving BBC-2). It was also transmitted again on BBC2 as part of that station's twenty-fifth anniversary season in 1989. In 1983 it won the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial, and in the year 2000 was placed seventh in a British Film Institute poll of industry professionals to find the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century. It was also named as one of the forty greatest television shows in a 2003 list compiled by the Radio Times magazine's chief television writer Alison Graham. In March 2007, Channel 4 broadcast a "Top 50 Dramas", based on input from industry professionals rather than the public, which had Boys from the Blackstuff at number two..

Enjoy, As Aye,

Phil.