y using lightweight cameras and by taking the action out of the studio. The director Ken Loach rejected the used of the studio and instead opted for 16mm film. Cathy Come Home offered a harsh and jarring realism which depended on energetic editing, creative use of sound and dialogue, and techniques borrowed from documentary. However Mary Holland wrote for The Observer about the TV drama Cathy Come Home, Cathy did make people pause; did make homelessness for a time a fashionable cause; did extract some money for charity. But it failed to make any meaningful assault on the fundamental causes of the problem or to draw any conclusions . However it still showed the overwhelming concern with the outcasts of society ; the inadequacy of societys care for the disadvantaged, much like Boys from the Blackstuff did in the 1980s. Alan Bleasdales Boys from the Blackstuff was first shown in November 1982 and made a huge impact on British television. It highlighted the unemployment crisis in Britain in the eighties at the time when Thatcher was in power, showing that there was no hope under the Thatcherite government. Boys from the Blackstuff used a realist style to reflect the problems of the unemployed. It combined realism, black humour and surrealism to successfully portray the desperateness of the situation. Bleasdale used distanciation to make the drama even more powerful by presenting the truth but moving away from pure realism. It challenged the dominant idea that the unemployed are a burden on society and showed that they were actually suffering people. It is a serious drama, which challenges conventional perceptions of society. Boys from the Blackstuff rests in its engagement with the over-riding concerns of the day in a highly imaginative dramatic form. As a TV drama Boys from the Blackstuff is pessimistic, but the audience at the time read it positively and it had a positive effect on their outlook. After the first BBC2 broadca...
