People Like Us
BBC3, Wednesday 6th Fb, 9pm - 10pm
Repeat: BBC3, Tomorrow, 12:30am
Repeat: BBC3, Fri 8 Feb 1:55amThis is an odd one to describe – on the one hand, it’s a gritty doc about lives blighted by a lack of hope, chances and ambition. But on the other, it’s constructed as a soap and peopled by larger-than-life characters whose days revolve around the launderette, the newsagent’s and the pub (or in this case the Embassy club, once owned by Bernard Manning).
The setting is Harpurhey, the Manchester district once named as the most deprived neighbourhood in England. But there’s humour, too, albeit bleak: take the ecstatic Amber, who returns from a Magaluf holiday having been “banned from McDonald’s, the hotel, the nightclub…”
1/6. Documentary following the lives of young adults who have grown up in the Manchester suburb of Harpurhey, beginning with 18-year-old Amber, who has just booked a girls' holiday in Magaluf to escape a summer stuck in her family's launderette business. Discount DVD trader and ladies' man Jamie has just proposed to his girlfriend, and local newsagent David reveals how he loves to transform into his drag queen alter ego at night. Narrated by Natalie Casey.
Radiotimes
