Television - Andrew Billen on runaways and a tale of the expected
For a programme that advertises itself as looking at "the realities of life for children and young people who slip between society's cracks", the striking thing about Channel 4's Staying Lost (9pm, Mondays) is how unreal it looks. From the outset, this week's episode, largely set in the unofficial dormitories of London mainline stations, resembled a feature film with pretensions - Mona Lisa, specifically. The streets and subways of King's and Charing Crosses were dressed in a livery of blue and gold light so artificial that I was not surprised to see a "colourist" named on the final credits.
Next to hers was a credit for the "Prologue", a doggerel verse made up of words and phrases the youngsters would utter during the next 60 minutes: "In Secure, Locked Up, Christmas, Not Fair, Help, Everything Blurry." If its author, Baxter Dury, thinks this is found art, I'd urge him to hand it into Lost Property. I'll give him, however, that "In Secure" is a neat play on words, for "Secure" is short for secure unit, to which under-16s can be sent if they persistently run away from care. Secure was the fear of each and every one of the film's young subjects, although even this dread was over-dramatised by Stereolab's doomy electronic music and the repeated shots of a police helicopter hovering over Leicester Square.
Months before it was scheduled, Staying Lost was in trouble for supposedly faking scenes. Its makers, Pamela Gordon and Tom Roberts, won the case brought against them by Nottingham City Council, but the whole look of the programme encouraged you to question its authenticity. One scene had us watch a couple of drug users wake up, the young woman conveniently reminding her beau that she was going into detox today. How long were we meant to believe the camera had lurked there waiting for them to rouse themselves? A tall story about a gay orgy was related by a minor player in the film while she lounged on a tomb in a graveyard - and one wondered if that cameo would have made it to the final edit if it had been delivered in a less evocative venue. At the end, the most charismatic of the kids, 14-year-old Siobhan, was painting her lips and dousing herself with hairspray. The film cut to a solitary figure wandering down a particularly mean alley. If we were meant to understand she was briefly on the game, why did no caption say so?
Overproduction obscured this documentary's good work like a miasma, as if the makers did not trust that, having filmed these runaways for 18 months, they had a terrific story anyway, which they had. If they did know, I'm not sure they understood what it was. Judging by the back-up mat-erial, Staying Lost thought itself an expose of state neglect. In fact it was a study in character, which proved the real prerequisite for survival on the streets. Curtis, with a speech impediment so bad the programme artfully subtitled his interview, and Kelly, his 25-year-old junkie girlfriend who pined for rehab but lasted in the unit only long enough to get a haircut, looked like losers from the start. In contrast, some innate cunning in Siobhan told her how to get by. She inveigled herself into Kelly and Curtis's flat and guilt-tripped the film-makers into buying her a meal. The final word on her was that she was enjoying being back at school. She'll probably grow up to make documentaries.
Staying Lost was keener to apportion blame than were its subjects, who were given to fits of mordant self-criticism. The middle classes got a bad rap for their ungenerous response to street begging. The better groomed you were, the more likely was the camera to fix you with its icy glare as you took money from the cashpoint. The bourgeoisie was also the target of Tuesday night's pre-Halloween story, The Visitor, one of a triptych of contemporary chillers Channel 4 is putting out at 10pm under the Shockers label.
In Guy Burt's story, a working-class weirdo assumed the identity of a young professional and took his room in a shared house of the type This Life made famous. "Richard", full of proletarian vigour, proved a wow with the ladies. But there was something not quite right: he sounded the "is" in "Chablis" when ordering at a restaurant. From this class slip, it was but a short step to murder and arson. Yet in some ghastly way, as Richard told his landlady that no one loved her and she had not earned the right to own her house, we seemed to be asked to admire him as a excoriating truth-teller. (Mike Leigh did this business of an excluded outsider making his way into society only pointlessly to expose it so much better in Naked.) It ended with an Is The Monster Really Dead? false climax. Yawn.
Believe me, I'm all in favour of the return of the single drama but, as with Love in the 21st Century this summer, Shockers is nearer a series of Tales of the Unexpected than Play for Today. Schematic and under-scripted, these high-concept films remain unbelievable even as urban myths. Channel 4 should stop commissioning them.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the London "Evening Standard"
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