TV Review: BBC’s The Moorside
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Before episode two of BBC’s The Moorside airs, we thought we’d share our thoughts on the first episode. The controversial three-part drama starring Sheridan Smith as ‘Julie’ narrates the story of the woman who led the search for missing child Shannon Matthews.
At the beginning of the episode, the BBC make it explicitly clear that extensive research went into the making of the series – even if some parts needed to be dramatised.
The general story of Shannon Matthews went something like this: On the 19th February 2008 in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, Karen Matthews called police to report that her nine-year-old daughter Shannon hadn’t come home from school. She was “missing” for 24 days until police found her hidden under a bed at her uncle’s house. It emerged quite quickly that her mother and stepfather had planned this fake kidnapping in order to pocket the reward money for themselves.
The dramatised version shows the alarming and actual behaviour of Karen Matthews and her boyfriend and the deeply moving response of the entire community who come together for the family. Even though the area of Dewsbury is quite clearly underfunded and run down, not one single person is portrayed as a ‘chav’.
The characters in the show (who are all real people) are all so different and complex. Julie is a fairly new friend of Karen’s before Shannon disappears but she is relentless in leading the search for the child. She is feisty, trusting and loving and not once does she question the validity of Karen’s story. The next door neighbour and best friend Natalie is the first one to become suspicious of Karen, as she spends the most time with her. She tries to help Karen as much as she can but is not as willing as the rest of the village to make constant excuses for holes in Karen’s story. Karen herself is the most complex one out of all of them. Her strange and sometimes smug behaviour is disturbing to watch and it is hard to believe that she could have devised such a complex plot.
We cannot wait for the next episode of this gripping and complicated series. It raises lots of questions about the way the matter was treated while it was happening and the way we look at working class communities.