Brassic writer Danny Brocklehurst on Thatcher, bull semen and why TV needs working-class people

Since becoming a professional screenwriter I have written 12 dramas about working-class life. From the early days of Clocking Off through Ordinary Lies, Come Home and The Driver to more recently, Ten Pound Poms and my Sky Comedy drama Brassic. Aside from ‘the master’ Jimmy McGovern, this may be more than any other living UK screenwriter. 

I grew up in a very working-class home, dad worked in a factory, and mum was a secretary – as they used to call them – to a solicitor. We didn’t have bags of cash, but we weren’t on the poverty line either. But growing up in the north of England in the 1980s was hard. Thatcher was destroying northern cities. Unemployment was high. Crime was high. Social unrest was high. There was a feeling that our part of the country was getting left behind while people in the south were – seemingly – thriving. 

I grew up on TV that reflected this: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, about brickies having to relocate to Germany to find work; Minder, about petty criminality in the less affluent parts of London; Boys from the Blackstuff, early Brookside, Making Out. 

These shows all depict the working class in a way that doesn’t feel grim and depressing. Sure, Blackstuff went to dark places but it was shot through with humour, warmth and love. And this is what I’ve always tried to do with my work, to deliver a truthful portrayal of life as I see it, but never become miserablist or worse, worthy.

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Brassic is the ultimate example of this. Although it presents as a potty-mouthed comedy about a gang of low-level thieves and their crazy schemes, we Trojan horse in pretty deep themes, the most obvious being the mental health struggles of my co-creator Joe Gilgun. Joe has put a huge amount of his own life on screen, based on his own experiences of bi-polar (and later, BPD) and our loving audience has responded to that.

The feedback I get most often is how much viewers enjoy the mix of comedy and emotion. How we take them to places they didn’t expect and how truthful the world feels. We have written about small-town prejudice, people trafficking, alcoholism and the effects of troubled childhoods but always in a way that places the comedy front and centre and keeps the love and friendship of our characters as the spine of the series.

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Over the years, the gang have concocted a scheme to steal expensive bull semen, have broken into a nightclub vault via the sewers and attempted to locate LS Lowry’s priceless but unknown sex paintings. Which are all comic ideas, but speak to a universal truth that areas like our fictional Hawley have a Wild West quality that makes any route to fast cash acceptable.

It’s rare for a show nowadays to run to six seasons. I think it’s astounding that we have managed to keep the show as fresh as it is. 

But Brassic is an outlier in British TV. A successful show about working-class life is no longer commonplace. Which is a shame, because we need shows that shine a light on the lives of the viewing public, whoever they are.

I would argue the best way to do that is to have an industry made up of people that can bring their experience of life to the table. Unfortunately, the chance of a child from a working-class background ending up in television or cinema now is extremely low.

Our sector annually contributes £109bn to the UK economy, and not only entertains the public on a daily basis but sets the agenda and fuels debate. Yet, the brutal reality is only 8% of those employed in UK screen industries come from a working-class background compared to 38% in the wider economy, a fact highlight by Sherwood writer James Graham in his recent Edinburgh Festival speech. 

Graham also highlighted the lack of arts-based subjects in the core curriculum of state schools, saying this added to the feeling that music, drama, and the arts were something ‘other’ to mainstream education and less likely to lead to employment, while fostering the idea among working-class families that the arts were only for those who could afford it.

I have been banging this drum for a long time. Many moons ago, when I was a journalist for Big Issue, I wrote passionately about the need to make the arts more accessible for all. 

Big Issue instilled in me a sense that positive change can happen and that all corners of life need a light shining on them. The issues I was writing about then are some of the same issues I’m writing about now, albeit in a different format. The throughline from Big Issue to Brassic is clear, though in those days there was definitely no bull semen.

Brassic series six will launch on Sky Max and streaming service NOW on 26 September.

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