In fact it was between 25 and 30 minutes. I blame the TV scheduling in my formative years when the average programme was of that duration or in the case of those animated features just before weekday tea times as short as 5 minutes-thank you Hector the house, Captain Pugwash and Crystal Tips. I fully absolve, of course, Roobarb the dog and Custard the cat of any contribution to my attention deficit disorder as it probably was labelled many years later.
In 1982 a drama series on the small screen make quite an impression on me and I managed to sit through all of the 5 part broadcast.
It was Boys from the Black Stuff.
It was one of those gritty and raw televisual experiences which to me, a middle class 19 year old, really pushed me out of my comfort zone.
I was politically naive living in a nice, quiet market town of apparent affluence and full employment but yet the country at large was at 3 million out of work. This was the highest level since the depression of the 1930's and with a bubbling undertone of poverty, social injustice and industrial decline.
The original work by Alan Bleasdale had emerged in 1978 as a short Play for Today illustrating that there were already problems in British Society and the national economy even before the watershed of blame usually reserved for the Government of Margaret Thatcher. The Tory party in power just added to the relevance of the issues and sentiments over the previous three years.
The setting for the characters and the stage for the playing out of their stories was Liverpool but it could have been rolled out in any city or conurbation of the period.
The Boys from the Black Stuff were a tarmac labouring gang with the inspiration being family and relatives of Bleasdale. Theirs was a constant battle against officialdom, specifically the Department of Social Security Benefit Fraud Inspectors, as survival in a bleak, job starved market inevitably involved moonlighting and doing work for cash in hand whilst still drawing the dole. The Liverpool of 1982 had 1 in 5 unemployment. The Labour Exchanges were full of white working class males, skilled and unskilled, waiting to sign on and go through the demoralising and impersonal process of questioning and justifying their existence. The DSS were portrayed very badly in their inflexibility and protocols although Bleasdale had been very well advised by a disaffected former member of staff whose motivation to eventually quit was the relentless hounding and chasing of the poorest claimants for mere pennies. This contrasted sharply with the excesses of the City Bankers and the new Stavros "loads of money" culture.
The main characters of the drama struck a distinct chord with the viewing public. They were ordinary working people thrust into desperate times and regarded as mere collateral damage by a Government intent on destroying the Unions under the guise of modernising the economy. Driven to illegality, fiddling the social, violence and to the edge of madness and depression some semblance of faith in their class, hopes and dreams still managed to cling on.
Bleasdale was determined not to produce a documentary type basis for the storylines and in fact the overriding dramatic form was more operatic in the comedic mode not out of place in a Shakespearian or Thackeray play. The writing was sharp, thought provoking, melancholy and tear jerking in the extreme but humour was never far below the surface. As someone once said of Liverpudlians- they are all born comedians. The city had in previous decades thrived on the Mersey Beat generation, The Beatles, Pop Culture and a succession of renowned performers and celebrities. Liverpool was bubbling and happy. A few years before Boys from the Black Stuff one of the most popular BBC TV shows was the Liver Birds, a light and airy production.
The new image in the bleak 1980's served as a shock to the perception of the city and its population. The relegation of the Liverpool workers as portrayed was swift and ruthless. As one of the characters says he had become "a second class citizen, a second rate man, no job, no place".
There is a particularly poignant exchange between the husband and wife who made up one of the main sub-stories. Times are hard and there is little money and food coming into the house. The wife bemoans that there is "half a tub of marg, mondays milk and a pound of dead lettuce". The man replies that they will save on the electricity but the wife retaliates with "until they come and cut that off". Defiantly her husband states that "At least they can't cut me off- that's your job". The final words rests with the wife "I can't cut off what you haven't got".
A laugh out loud moment in perfect balance is when in a downward spiral the lead character goes to see a Priest. Respectful and humble towards the clergyman he is asked to call him by his Christian name, Dan. The heartpouring of "I'm desperate Dan" is a laugh out loud moment amongst the misery and depression.
The catchphrase of the cult figure of Yossa Hughes of "Gizza Job" was bandied about from the school playground to the workplace and became firmly entrenched in popular culture of the time and to the present day.
Today there are fresh contemporary problems and the various political parties are attempting to gain momentum and a greater share of the vote through seemingly championing English jobs for English workers, anti-immigration and the influence either positive or negative of the EU.
The series now 32 years old however remains relevant to current times in that the same issues prevail of unemployment, industrial decline and personal problems of money and the cumulative affect of realtionships and morale. The engagement of the 1982 British Public with the sentiments of Boys from the Black Stuff has not been replicated in any drama production since which is a tremendous homage to the reality portrayed by Bleasdale and the cast.
When asked if the programme would be made in 2014 Britain , Bleasdale modestly stated that the miserable storyboard would not get past the commissioning stage. The British Public demand more from their entertainment although perhaps and with sadness this is a reflection of the ultimate demise of working class culture. This is a strange phenomena given that ours is a time when the voiceless disenfranchised are becoming even more alienated which can only lead to rifts and fissures in our social base.
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