Shameless makes a timely return to the nations televisions this week. Timely because in the current harsh financial climate those hit first and hardest are the most disadvantaged members of society who live in the most deprived localities. And they don’t come much more disadvantaged that the Gallaher’s and their neighbours or more deprived than the Chatsworth estate they live on.
As the public sector cuts bite it will be even more important for Local Authorities to assume their community leadership role and ensure those on the fringes of society don’t become totally detached, that service cuts don’t disproportionately hit the poorest and most disadvantaged and that we don’t give up on a generation of young people but continue to invest in the future.
You can see deprivation-boarded up houses, burnt out cars, graffiti, piles of rubbish, discarded syringes. You can measure deprivation by the numbers of long- term unemployed, substandard housing, teenage pregnancies, GCSE passes, birth weight and life expectancy.
But this doesn’t mean you understand deprivation. You can of course ask people what it’s like to live here but it’s difficult to get answers that will give you a real insight. Strategic planners, senior managers and local politicians will need this insight if they are to deliver budgets cuts yet protect the most vulnerable, if they are to make regeneration initiatives, housing strategies, health equality and community safety plans work. It will also necessary to get the support of the wider community for directing scarce resources to these localities. This will not be easy as these groups are often labelled the undeserving poor, whose poor health is a result of their life style and whose long-term unemployment a result of the benefit culture.
Can a TV programme challenge the popular stereotypes or will it just reinforce them?
The past series of Shameless have used humour to tread this tightrope between giving real insight into how some people live whilst challenging the media stereo types.
Shameless is a gritty comedy about a dysfunctional family set on a Manchester sink estate. Dad is an unemployed drunk. One of the teenage boys became a father by his ex-girlfriend. He is intelligent and goes to university but struggles with the contrast between his life at uni and his life on the estate. The other is gay, takes drugs and doesn’t steal from his employer the local gay Asian shopkeeper. Their younger sister acts as mother to the extended family, makes the money stretch, runs the house hold and brings up her little brother.
In each episode, family members out wit the authorities-school, social services, housing, the council, benefit agencies and police. All of who are portrayed as incompetent and corrupt or well intended but hopelessly out of touch. As a family they look out for each other and they have a clear sense of right and wrong. They can articulate their feelings and have an insight into the effects their actions have on others. They take drugs, get drunk and have sex-lots of it because they know how to ‘party’. It’s great entertainment.
The characters in Shameless would be recognised by social workers, teachers, housing officers, health visitors and benefit agency staff. But does Shameless offer any insight or does it just romanticise unemployment, poverty, drug abuse, petty crime and casual violence?
And now I here they are going to remake it for the USA and set it in Chicago!