Suspicion reigns in the new Benefits Street
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Version 0 of 1. Kingston Road in Stockton-on-Tees is a short, low-rise, nowhere-to-hide kind of street. It's part of an estate of squat, tidy newbuilds, arranged around optimistic circles of grass. There's a wary atmosphere – people stand at their windows, wondering what your business is. Two young men, one with a mower, one with a broom, stared at me with open hostility. I guess because I obviously didn't have anything to mow. Someone threw an egg at the photographer. "They nick them from the local shop and then throw them at people," John Hennig, a retired teacher who lives in the road, told him. Even the eggs aren't legitimate. This is Benefits Street, 2.0. Nobody appearing on the show wants to talk about the filming, though a lot of people will tell you why they don't want to talk about it, for quite a long time. "I don't want to talk, for the simple reason that it's my family," a woman started. Her friend was walking on ahead, going: "Don't talk to them. I'm not staying if you're going to talk to them." It feels as though everybody would love to talk, but they don't want what they say to be mediated through someone they have no reason to trust. Who would? Another woman, standing outside the house where the production crew was filming , said: "I can't see why the media's torturing people. There were two ladies hiding in bushes. Spying on us." Kieran Smith, the series producer, spoke to me before I visited: "Generally speaking, there might be one or two people who would rather we weren't there. But we haven't faced massive opposition. Alex Cunningham [the local MP] has very publicly pronounced against us from a position of no knowledge. Politicians who they've never seen on Kingston Road. To put it bluntly, what MPs want is for you to tell a story about the amazing investment that's happened in their city. Which is fine, but don't try and stop people who haven't seen that investment … Don't try to silence them because they don't fit your picture." But it isn't strictly true to say that opposition is mostly from politicians. At a Middlesbrough football match two weekends ago, vast banners were unfurled, saying "Being Poor is Not Entertainment". Another anonymous man, sitting in his front garden in perpendicular Tilery Way, doesn't exactly agree. "It's a fact, you don't see many official people about. But Alex Cunningham's a good lad. I knew him when I was running a community centre, before he was an MP. He's alright. I have nothing against the people [on the programme], but they're cutting their own throats. It's a disgrace, that programme. It's a load of shite." The programme makers argue that their portrayals are sensitive, human and not judgmental and that, unlike most documentaries, they give approval to the subjects, and never screen anything they're not happy with. The problem is, as Phil, who runs a local cafe says: "It's fetching the area down. It's only here to look at people on benefits. It's not interested in people like me, who work 24/7." He is not thrilled with the crew, either. "They came in here yesterday, hour and a half, had three coffees. One each. I wish I'd said, it's not Benefits Cafe." One of his customers chimes in: "They're saying, this person's on benefits and struggling. They're not saying, this person's working and struggling even more," adding: "The people on it think they're all going to be like White Dee [from the first Benefits Street] and make money out of it. But I don't think they are." The problem is, you have the lives lived on one side, and the weight of the nation's attention on the other, and it's wildly asymmetrical. This week, with its unwanted journalists, bush-hiding photographers and political interventions, is only the beginning of an avalanche of scrutiny that nobody would ever choose. It's not "enhanced" reality, in the sense that Towie (The Only Way is Essex) is, it's just plain reality; but there is a sense of hyper-reality about it. Reserved people simply wouldn't be on television in this way. So you have a self-selected sample of impetuous people, thinking … well, I don't know what they were thinking because they wouldn't say. But it looked something like: "What have I done?" "What are you going to say?" asked Phil in the cafe. "Am I going to have to close down?" He eyed me nervously, then decided either that I'm probably alright, or that it was too late to worry about it. "As long as you say: 'I called in at the local cafe, Phil-Mee Belly, and I got reasonable food at reasonable prices'." I chuckled gamely. Later, it dawned on me that when you get a giant sausage roll and a cup of tea for £1.70, it would be criminal not to mention that. |