Boys from the Blackstuff review: Alan Bleasdale adaptation needs to feel more like a play for today
There haven’t been many better bits of telly than the five episodes that make up Boys from the Blackstuff, the seminal series by about a group of tarmac layers in Liverpool in 1982, each cracking under the pressures of unemployment. It started life as a BBC Play for Today before widening out into a series that was bleak and hard-hitting, but also funny and surreal, slow and lyrical, and absolutely gripping.
