An Analysis of Boys from Blackstuff by Bleasedale

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An analysis of ‘Boys from the Blackstuff ‘by Alan Bleasdale Boys from the Blackstuff by Alan Bleasdale is a highly popular screenplay which tells about the lives of a group of Liverpool builders left jobless in the early1980s because of economic recession and resulting unemployment due to the Conservative Thatcher government implementing some important structural changes in the economy. As a matter of fact, this is a five-episode TV drama series based on the original play 'The Blackstuff’ by Alan Bleasdale, a playwright who is also from Liverpool. Alan Bleasdale, who was born in Liverpool on 23 March 1946, originally was a school teacher and started his writing career because there was not any available to appeal to his students. He first wrote a series of short stories about a teenager called Scully. These stories were broadcast read by the author himself on BBC Radio in 1971. Later Bleasdale used Scully for a novel, stage plays, and a television series. Then, he wrote 'The Blackstuff’, a play about a group of road workers from Liverpool. 'The Black Stuff' was filmed in 1978. Bleasdale wrote his idea of making the drama into five plays by using the characters in 'The Black Stuff' to the Head of BBC English Regions Drama in order to explore the problem of prevalent unemployment and people’s reactions towards it at that time. The Black Stuff' was not transmitted until after Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government had come to power. (Cooke) As a result of the new Thatcher government's economic policies, unemployment increased dramatically. Boys from the Blackstuff was aired, in October 1982, at a time when over three million people were out of work, which was the highest unemployment for fifty years. Boys from the Blackstuff created a national awareness and concern about the effect of Thatcher's policies on working-class communities especially in
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