Leaning on the bar of The Crow’s Nest pub in the northern town of Hawley, Danny Brocklehurst has something to say.
“I think our industry should be collectively appalled that only 9% of people who work in it would declare themselves as coming from a working class background,” he says.
The industry in question is the world of TV and film, which is not an insubstantial sector: according to the latest British Film Institute figures, it’s collectively worth £12.6bn to the UK economy.
The bar Brocklehurst, 53, is leaning on is a real one but it’s not actually in a pub called The Crow’s Nest, nor is it in the town of Hawley. Both of those are fictional creations, the backdrop for the Sky TV comedy-drama Brassic, co-created by Brocklehurst and Joseph Gilgun, the actor who also stars in the show as Vinnie O’Neil.
Last week, The Star and Garter, in the shadow of Manchester’s Piccadilly station, was doubling up for the pub at the heart of the fictional town (loosely based on Chorley, Lancashire, where Gilgun grew up), and The Crow’s Nest is to Hawley what the Rovers Return is to Weatherfield, or the Queen Vic to Walford.
Brassic could be described as Trainspotting meets Last of the Summer Wine; a group of petty criminals with a strong moral compass make their living growing weed and embarking on a series of outlandish money-making capers, from attempting to steal Malcolm Lowry’s suppressed sex paintings to extracting prize bull semen.
It’s at its best, though, in the tender, thoughtful moments. Just as the zaniness is inspired by Gilgun’s youthful tearaway adventures, so is the exploration of mental health. One of the characters is bipolar, while Gilgun lives with mental health issues.
Most of the cast are from working class backgrounds themselves, as is Brocklehurst. But he wants young people who grew up like them to know that there are opportunities in TV that aren’t necessarily the talent acting in front of the camera, or writing the scripts behind a laptop.
Just over a year ago, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) published its Invisible Barriers guide, aimed at “widening access and progression in the screen arts for those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as highlighting ideas for authentic representation and storytelling on-screen”.
Brocklehurst was part of the Invisible Barriers programme, which identified that only 9% of people working in the industry considered themselves working class, and improving opportunities for people like him and Gilgun is something he’s almost evangelical about. He says, “Invisible Barriers was an attempt to look at the industry to see why so few working class people were employed within it, and they found things that I certainly recognised.
“There are these barriers to working class people… we’re talking about no visible role models, no encouragement in schools to pursue such a career. We’re talking about a feeling of imposter syndrome.
“There are also financial restraints. If you want to get your foot in the door in television, sometimes you have to take an unpaid or very low-paid job to start off, and if you’re working class, who’s going to support you if you do that?
“And there’s a general paucity of people being aware that they can even get such a job. Certainly, when I was growing up it didn’t even seem to me to be the remotest possibility. Obviously I’ve ended up here, but it wasn’t an easy path.”
It was a combination of good luck and brass neck that got Brocklehurst his start. Working as a journalist in the early 1990s, he interviewed Shameless creator Paul Abbott for the Manchester magazine City Life. After a couple of glasses of wine, Brocklehurst felt emboldened enough to ask Abbott if he’d read a script he’d written.
Brocklehurst went on to rack up an impressive screenwriting CV, including Shameless, Clocking Off, Jimmy McGovern’s The Street, and the Netflix shows Fool Me Once and The Stranger, both adapted from Harlen Coben novels. And then, of course, Brassic, which began in 2019 and is currently shooting its seventh season.
Brocklehurst waves his hand around the packed pub. “There are something like 70 people doing a job here today, and the’re all absolutely integral to the production, doing work you never really see so much on screen.
“People doing the lights, electricians, security, an army of people who make this happen. It might just be as simple as taking kids from schools to go on a visit to a set, and say, look, that person’s holding a boom, that person’s the assistant director. And it might just spark something in them, make them think, I could do that.”
He says that while the industry is making strides to address the imbalance, things need to improve more quickly. “I’m not beating anyone over the head here,” says Brocklehurst, “because I think it is a difficult thing to change, and the sort of change that comes about very slowly and organically.
“But if you don’t at least open the door a crack to people from different backgrounds, then everything is just going to stay the same, and I don’t think that benefits the industry.”
During his interview with the Observer, Brocklehurst hesitantly admits that this seventh series of Brassic, due to be broadcast later this year, could be the last, unaware that Sky is right at that moment putting out a press release confirming just that. By the time the interview is over, the Daily Mail has already declared “Pregnant Michelle Keegan’s Brassic AXED”.
“Fucking axed,” Brocklehurst seethes on text the next day. The show hasn’t been cancelled by Sky – in fact, they were keen to sign up for at least two more seasons. But the show has come to a natural end for Brocklehurst and Gilgun.
“With anything, the more you do, the harder it gets to maintain quality and not repeat yourself,” he says on the set. “One of the problems we had with Shameless was that we started to lose the core cast… if that happens then you lose the early magic. It’s not the same any more. And I don’t want to end up doing an apologetic version of Brassic.”
