STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
As the cost of living is rising and real terms wage increases are proving non-existent, more people around the country are sliding into debt than ever before, and many debts are being left to escalate to the point where it's referred to the High Court. One such HC enforcement group goes by the name of dcbl, which this programme follows the exploits of, as they travel the country, enforcing writs and encountering hostility from many of the debtors.
In this sad, unfortunate world, quality, well written, worthwhile television of the sort that was the norm as recently as two decades ago, has all but evaporated, and the craze for this generation's lazy, easily pleased crowd is the none stop splurge of 'reality TV.' Channel 5 (that, forebodingly, came around two decades ago!) is the main purveyor of this endless stream of cheap, easily made, tackily slapped together pile of programmes that clutter the schedules, and of which Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away (the titles are always similarly lazy and unimaginative!) is one of the more popular examples. But what is even more unsavoury about the existence of these programmes, is the sleazy, voyeuristic thrill we are encouraged to derive from those in desperate, life shattering situations, losing everything and falling into despair, but who are happy to have their personal business broadcast to the public without their faces being blurred, which the generation before would have regarded as nobody else's business, which further shows how far we've fallen as a culture!
While some of the debtors don't have a problem with facing the scorn of society, none of the featured baliffs do, and so we learn of them, their names, and are left to examine the moral ambiguity of them as people, of which some fall far short! A man called Paul Bohill is the most charismatic and surprising of the bunch, still tackling problem debtors and putting himself in potentially volatile situations despite being in his seventies now, but with his age he undoubtedly applies a more calm, reasoned approach to things, along with his frequent partner, the similarly aged Steve Pinner. They are undoubtedly the most shining of the group, but there's also the likes of Brian O' Shaughnessy, who seems to get tangled up with serial killers off screen but, most shockingly of all, the now cancer ridden Delroy Anglin, a former Met police commander who was involved in a scandal involving stolen drugs!
Regardless of whether many of the debtors command sympathy or not, and have only themselves to blame, this is nonetheless still cruel, exploitative television, that invites us to voyeur at people when they're at their lowest and caked in misery, and a shattering indictment of what we as a society now demand as our entertainment. *
