The Moorside - Shannon Matthews

[redsturgeon]

I just watched this on iplayer and found it to be a gripping drama, well acted and sticking to the main facts of the Shannon Matthews abduction story.

Fascinating watching, I would recommend it.

John

[flint]

I thought the actress who played the mother of Shannon was outstanding - an Oscar performance

[swill453]

I have to say I thought it had a bit of a "victimy" spin on it, as far as Karen was concerned. This may be true, of course, but the judge who heard all the evidence said "The offences you committed were truly despicable".

Watchable, though.

Scott.

[redsturgeon]

I thought the portrayal of Karen was such that at times you though, "victim" and at others, "liar".

This made it very watchable for me.

I guess if I was to make any complaint it would be the volte face of the usual outcry in that the female leads were much more three dimensional than the males. Not that it bothered me at all but I guess the feckless boyfriend and the "uncle" were not really portrayed in any detail at all.

John

[Clitheroekid]

Fascinating watching, I would recommend it.

I agree. I thought it was one of the best TV dramas I've seen for a while, and that Sheridan Smith, in particular, was outstanding.

I recall her from the drama documentary in which she played Cilla Black. She did her own singing and I thought she actually sounded better than the original!

But all the acting was excellent. The woman who played Karen was uncannily like the real woman.

I have to say I thought it had a bit of a "victimy" spin on it, as far as Karen was concerned. This may be true, of course, but the judge who heard all the evidence said "The offences you committed were truly despicable".

I didn't see her so much as a victim; just someone who was completely inadequately equipped to deal with life. There are millions of such people, surviving from day to day, but they're like the "submerged tenth" of Victorian times. The rest of us are mostly in blissful ignorance of their existence until we see something like this.

The crime may well have been "despicable" by the standards of normal people, but I sometimes think that judging and punishing women like KM is making the incorrect assumption that she is a normal member of society, to be judged by normal standards.

In reality, people like her are rather like overgrown and rather backward children. They tend to act on impulse rather than making rational decisions, largely because they’re incapable of rational thought.

In many cases, again like a backward child, they have only the vaguest notions of right and wrong and can’t assess or predict the serious consequences that follow an action.

Putting such people in prison is, I suppose, inevitable, in order to appease the public’s demand for punishment, but it achieves nothing. It doesn’t act as a deterrent, because that assumes people will weigh up the risks before repeating the behaviour, which they don’t. In any case, this was clearly a one off, incredibly stupid act that there was no chance of her ever repeating.

I don’t pretend to know how people like this should be dealt with, but the main problem is that the people who constitute this “submerged tenth” seem to be a permanent feature of society, with no real hope of ever bringing them out of the pit they inhabit.

[redsturgeon]

The other interesting context to all of this was the fact that each of the three main female protagonists had suffered abuse, either sexual or physical or both, at the hands of family or partners. Truly shocking but also demonstrating that having suffered childhood abuse was not necessarily a one way trip to a dysfunctional later life.

John

[TonyB]

Very watchable and thoroughly enjoyable if a little depressing. Raised many social issues without answering any, (I particularly dislike dramas with a single message), showing how simple and complex people and society are. It should win awards for both the play and acting.

TonyB

[todthedog]

Found it gripping from start to finish.