Alan Bleasdale is one of the most successful and influential writers working in British television today. Drawing on the traditions of realist television drama, he established his reputation with several powerful but darkly comic screenplays set in the depressed cities of northern England.

Bleasdale’s first success as a writer came with the development of the character of Scully, a Liverpool youth whose anarchic adventures challenge the authority of those responsible for the impoverished society in which he lives. A series of stories about Scully was broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside in 1971, while Bleasdale was still earning his living as a teacher. From 1974 to 1979, Bleasdale presented the Franny Scully Show on Radio City Liverpool; the character also appeared in a touring theater show, a television play called Scully’ s New Year’ s Eve, broadcast by the BBC in 1978; and two novels that became the basis of a Granada television series in 1984.

The ability to create characters who capture the popular imagination was also apparent in Boys from the Blackstuff, the series that firmly established Bleasdale as a key figure in British television in the 1980s. This project had its roots in a single play called The Black Stuff, broadcast by the BBC in 1980, dealing with the disastrous money-making efforts of a gang of road workers from Liverpool. With the support of producer Michael Wearing, Bleasdale was able to create a five-part series dealing with the effects of unemployment on the “boys” and their families after their return to Liverpool.

Boys from the Blackstuff was first shown in a late-night time slot on BBC 2 in 1982 but proved so popular that it was quickly repeated in prime time on BBC 1 in January 1983. Each episode centers on a different character, but their paths frequently cross and the action builds toward the final episode in which they all come together at the funeral of an old worker whose socialist ideals no longer inspire the men of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. The impact of the series grew out of its commitment to showing the experience of unemployment from the point of view of the unemployed. It drew on the conventions of northern working-class realism prevalent in British cinema and television since the 1960s but also included elements of black comedy (derived from Liverpool’s traditional “scouse” humor) and grotesque nightmare images that expressed the psychological pressures of unemployment. This mixture of elements created an unsettling effect, but, despite its bleak vision, Boys from the Blackstuff promoted a sense of solidarity in viewers who faced similar problems. Catchphrases from the series were incorporated into chants by the supporters of the Liverpool soccer team.

Bleasdale has continued to write for television, as well as for film and theater, but the closest he has come to repeating the success of Boys from the Blackstuff has been with GBH, a seven-part serial broadcast on Channel 4 in 1991. Dealing with the takeover of a northern English city by a fascist organization, GBH was related to earlier serials, such as Troy Kennedy Martin’s Edge of Darkness (1985) and Alan Plater’s A Very British Coup (1988), which blended science fiction and political thriller to address growing fears that the British democratic system was threatened with collapse. Bleasdale’s political message was more explicitly stated here than in Boys from the Blackstuff, but the fiction was once again enriched by grotesque comedy, largely associated with the casting of Michael Palin, a member of the Monty Python troupe, as an unassuming school teacher who inadvertently becomes a symbol of resistance to the new order.

In 1994 Bleasdale took on a new role as producer of a series on Channel 4 called Alan Bleasdale Presents, using the influence made possible by the popular success of his work to give young writers a chance to demonstrate their talents. While the dramas presented in this series have adopted a variety of approaches, they owe much to Bleasdale’s own achievement, grounded in the tradition of “naturalism” in British television drama but creating compelling fictions by gradually introducing disruptive elements drawn from popular genres.

In his two most substantial screenplays of the mid- to late 1990s, Bleasdale moved away from the northern working-class environments of his earlier work. Jake’s Progress (Channel 4, 1995) was a six-part serial dealing with a crisis in a middle-class family, while Oliver Twist (ITV, 1999) was an eight-hour adaptation of Charles Dickens’s novel. Both continued Bleasdale’s efforts to push the boundaries of realism, filtering reality through the perceptions of a child for whom the adult world becomes a nightmare and often challenging viewers with highly disturbing images.