"The Black Stuff", first broadcast in 1980, was recently shown as part of a series on BBC4 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of "Play for Today", although it was not originally screened as part of that series. "Play for Today" was a BBC1 series, and this play was originally shown on BBC2, and although the two channels are both owned by the same corporation, in the seventies and early eighties, a time when Britain still had only three TV channels, they had different identities.
The "black stuff" of the title is tarmac, and the play is about a gang of workers from Liverpool laying tarmac on a road in Middlesbrough. Much of the plot deals with the men's attempts to outwit their foreman Dixie Dean (named after a famous Everton footballer) so they can slope off to "do a foreign", a slang phrase meaning using their employer's tools and equipment to do an unofficial job, in this case laying a track for a farmer, for which they will be paid on the side. The "foreign", however, has been arranged by a crafty pair of Irish gypsies, who are attempting to double-cross the gang. A sub-plot deals with Dixie's teenage son Kevin and his attempts to lose his virginity to a local good-time girl.
The play later gave rise to a television series named "The Boys from the Blackstuff" which followed the later lives of the gang, now unemployed and trying to survive on the dole. The eighties were a period of high unemployment in Britain, and the series became a symbol of the decade, widely seen as an indictment of life in what became known as "Thatcher's Britain". Bernard Hill's character Yosser Hughes, with his catchphrase "Gizza job!" became an eighties icon. Yet the original play shows just why nobody in their right mind would entrust Yosser with a job. He is not only dishonest, playing a leading role in the "foreign" scheme, but also quarrelsome, loud-mouthed and potentially violent. He is also not as smart as he thinks he is, letting the gypsies pull a fast one on him, and an idle worker. Mind you, he is not alone in being idle- the rest of the gang also try and get away with doing the bare minimum of work, and would probably do even less than that if the Clerk of the Works were not keeping his officious eye on them. There are several good performances in the play, but Hill's is probably the best.
It is a long time since I saw any of the episodes from "The Boys from the Blackstuff", so I will not attempt any direct comparisons, but the original play is less directly political. It was, in fact, made in 1978 under the Callaghan government, but for complicated reasons to do with internal disputes within the Beeb it was not shown until 1980, after the 1979 election which brought Margaret Thatcher to power. It is perhaps the lack of overt political content which has meant that "The Black Stuff" is less well known than its spin-off series, but it is in fact it is a very sharp, bleakly funny black comedy which deserves to be better remembered. 8/10
The "black stuff" of the title is tarmac, and the play is about a gang of workers from Liverpool laying tarmac on a road in Middlesbrough. Much of the plot deals with the men's attempts to outwit their foreman Dixie Dean (named after a famous Everton footballer) so they can slope off to "do a foreign", a slang phrase meaning using their employer's tools and equipment to do an unofficial job, in this case laying a track for a farmer, for which they will be paid on the side. The "foreign", however, has been arranged by a crafty pair of Irish gypsies, who are attempting to double-cross the gang. A sub-plot deals with Dixie's teenage son Kevin and his attempts to lose his virginity to a local good-time girl.
The play later gave rise to a television series named "The Boys from the Blackstuff" which followed the later lives of the gang, now unemployed and trying to survive on the dole. The eighties were a period of high unemployment in Britain, and the series became a symbol of the decade, widely seen as an indictment of life in what became known as "Thatcher's Britain". Bernard Hill's character Yosser Hughes, with his catchphrase "Gizza job!" became an eighties icon. Yet the original play shows just why nobody in their right mind would entrust Yosser with a job. He is not only dishonest, playing a leading role in the "foreign" scheme, but also quarrelsome, loud-mouthed and potentially violent. He is also not as smart as he thinks he is, letting the gypsies pull a fast one on him, and an idle worker. Mind you, he is not alone in being idle- the rest of the gang also try and get away with doing the bare minimum of work, and would probably do even less than that if the Clerk of the Works were not keeping his officious eye on them. There are several good performances in the play, but Hill's is probably the best.
It is a long time since I saw any of the episodes from "The Boys from the Blackstuff", so I will not attempt any direct comparisons, but the original play is less directly political. It was, in fact, made in 1978 under the Callaghan government, but for complicated reasons to do with internal disputes within the Beeb it was not shown until 1980, after the 1979 election which brought Margaret Thatcher to power. It is perhaps the lack of overt political content which has meant that "The Black Stuff" is less well known than its spin-off series, but it is in fact it is a very sharp, bleakly funny black comedy which deserves to be better remembered. 8/10