The BBC has admitted that some of the real-life characters depicted in a controversial dramatisation of the fake abduction of the schoolgirl Shannon Matthews were paid for their cooperation.
ITV Studios, the production company behind The Moorside, which aired on BBC1 on Tuesday, paid “small fees” to some people who had been involved in real life, a BBC spokeswoman told the Guardian.
The BBC spokeswoman would not confirm which real “characters” were paid but she said Shannon was not a consultant and did not receive any money.
Shannon, now 18, was not the focus of the drama, the spokeswoman said, adding: “Her abduction is not portrayed, nor her experience during the time she was missing. The drama tells the story of the women who led the campaign to find her.”
The admission came as a cousin of Shannon’s mother, Karen, who went to jail for orchestrating the 2008 kidnap, said the drama should not have been broadcast.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain on Wednesday, Susan Howgate condemned the makers of the BBC series, claiming that the project would “bring everything back”.“Family members will get grief like they have done in the past, I don’t think it should go ahead,” she said.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble, and same with my auntie, she’s been having bother. People keep saying stuff to her still.”
Despite the criticism, the drama was largely well-received by viewers. Sam Wollaston, the Guardian’s TV critic, praised The Moorside for being “non-judgmental”, while acknowledging that it could hurt the young woman at the centre of the story.
“If, somewhere, an 18-year-old who used to be called Shannon is watching, then hopefully it isn’t causing her any more trauma than she has already been through. Maybe she’s disappointed that she’s not really in it. That would be fine,” he wrote.
This week, Shannon’s grandparents, June and Gordon Matthews called the drama “sick and disgusting”.
Neither they nor Howgate were involved in the TV project. But some of those depicted in the drama assisted the production company, including Natalie Murray, one of the women on the Moorside estate who helped orchestrate the search for Shannon.
“I had a little input with the script and getting the accents and certain words right,” she told Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4. She was also given a say in what Sian Brooke, who played her, wore: “I didn’t want to be shown as wearing tracksuits and big hoop earrings. Things like that that had been depicted in reproductions before.”
The Guardian asked the BBC which of the real-life people featured in the drama had been paid for their cooperation.
A spokeswoman did not name any individuals, but said: “ITV Studios paid some contributors small fees to recompense them for their time, and for time taken off work.”
