I thought I knew this story. Well, it was such a strange one, and it changed as it went along. It started with the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl, Shannon Matthews, in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. It was a story of missing, and searching, and fearing the worst. Then it became one about Shannon not being Maddie and her family not being the McCanns. It was a story about the media, and politics, and Britain; a country divided by latitude and class and by the bits that weren’t broken and the bits that were. Then Shannon turned up, under the bed of mum Karen’s boyfriend’s uncle; and it was about kidnap, false imprisonment, perverting the course of justice and WT-actual-F.
But as he did with his drama Appropriate Adult, about Fred and Rosemary West, writer Neil McKay has found another way into a familiar, awful story. The Moorside (BBC1) is about the titular estate, and the community that lives there. It wasn’t filmed in Dewsbury, but up the road in Halifax, for reasons of sensitivity, and because they have already been through enough on the Moorside – or the Shannon Matthews estate, as it has become known. But they needn’t have worried. The Moorside is not just sensitive, it verges on positive.
Maybe not to the extent that local estate agents will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of a sudden salvo of post-broadcast inquiries. But it is, at least, a finger up to David Cameron who, following Shannon’s disappearance, called it “a place where decency fights a losing battle against degradation and despair”. If Broken Britain means not pretty like Chippy, and not getting out of your PJs the second you wake up (or even to go out into the yard to fetch the goose eggs), then fair dues, Dave, the Moorside is bust. But not if you are talking about heart and community.
Finger-sticker-upper-in-chief is Julie Bushby, who in real life got an in-person apology from Cameron, but, more importantly, was the driving force behind the community effort to find Shannon, and who is played here by Sheridan Smith. A speech she makes to the press – “When chips are down and one of us has a problem, we are all there to help, we stand shoulder to shoulder with one another, we will never give up hope” – is Churchillian in its power to move and stir into action, even if she was subsequently betrayed by the treachery of Karen Matthews, the friend she is being there for.
It’s getting boring, plus hard to avoid cliches, when gushing about Smith – her range, her extraordinary humanness, her ability not just to play someone but to inhabit them, to be heroic without being sentimental. But she is, to nick one of her own lines, “fucking brilliant, or what”. Big shout-outs also must go to Sian Brooke (Sherlock’s new secret sis) who plays Natalie Brown, the neighbour who begins to suspect Karen before Julie does. And to Game of Thrones’s Gemma Whelan, whose Karen is not the evil woman the real one was made out to be – more immature, naive, weak, easily manipulated ... and yet she did manage to con a lot of people for a long time, so she can’t be stupid.
Anyway, The Moorside allows you to make up your own mind. It’s non-judgmental, as well as unsentimental, responsible ... God, I’m making it sound worthy and bland. It isn’t, it’s convincing and real. But 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.
I already knew about the three stories in Britain’s Greatest Hoaxer (Channel 4), too: Simon Brodkin’s patriotic rapping rabbi on Britain’s Got Talent, his renaming of (Sir) Philip Green’s yacht and his Nazi golf balls at the opening of Donald Trump’s golf resort in Scotland. There’s so much more to it than the actual stunts, though. You get Simon’s reasons for picking his targets (obvious, sound); the extraordinary planning and preparation (and sometimes prosthetics) that goes into each setup; the excruciating tension of the buildup; and then the joy of execution.
Man, he’s got cojones, nothing false about them. With Trump, especially – he’s taking on armed secret-service agents. That’s a waterboarding at least, if he’s not shot.
It’s worth it, though, to see Trump on the ninth tee at Turnberry, surrounded by swastika golf balls ... and still surrounded by swastika golf balls because no one has cleared them away yet. “Get him out!” Donald says, face of thunder. Funny, that’s what the world is now saying, about you.
