“Gizza job. I can do that. All you gotta do is walk in a straight line!” Yosser Hughes, systematically stripped of job, pride and ultimately, his family, was to become one of the 80s great characters in TVs most articulate response to the Thatcher era. Includes the Play for Today as well as the complete BBC TV series that swept the awards board in 1982 and has been talked about ever since. Alan Bleasdales chronicles of the lives of a group of tarmac layers – Chrissie (with a powerful performance by Julie Walters as his wife, Angie), Loggo, Dixie, George and Yosser – bitterly dramatised the frustrations suffered by a fruitless search for work and an antagonistic social security system. Though harrowing and uncompromising, the stories, laced with scouse wit and humour became a seminal series.
