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Carla Lane's second long running series to feature Liverpool and its people
draws on the themes of redundancy and unemployment that destroyed the economic
and social fabric of Liverpool in the 1980s. Following in the footsteps of Alan
Bleasdale's hard-hitting social drama Boys from the Blackstuff (BBC, 1982),
Bread explored the domestic lives of a Catholic working-class family living in a
Victorian terraced street typical of the dockside neighbourhoods that developed
either side of the Pier Head in Liverpool's heyday.
Taking as its focus the Boswell family created in the final series of The
Liver Birds (BBC, 1969-79), Lane uniquely combined the traditional sitcom series
format with long-running storylines typical of soap opera. The central character
Nellie Boswell is a Catholic matriarch whose philandering husband Freddie has
left her for 'that tart' Lilo Lil; she has four grown up sons and a daughter,
all struggling to make a living. Initially condemned by critics in her home town
for perpetuating negative stereotypes of the city's population as work shy
scroungers, Lane defended the series as "an optimistic salute to the
resourcefulness of Liverpudlians on the dole-line and the invincibility of the
family unit."
The focus on a family sticking together through hard times undoubtedly
appealed to a nation reeling from the Thatcher government's privatisation
policies, the closure of nationalised industries such as coal and steel and the
social and economic devastation to traditional working-class communities that
followed in their wake. The strong sense of identity, emphasised by the use of
convincing regional accents and location camerawork, personalised the effects of
unemployment on the everyday lives of working-class people and gave the series
an authenticity that other sitcoms of the day lacked.
Classic sequences include regular confrontations between family members and
the exasperated clerk Martina at the social security office as Joey seeks to
take advantage of various government employment incentive schemes and Nellie
Boswell's daily prayers at meal time gatherings, where she collects the money
from her children to pay the household bills. After a slow start, Bread became a
national success, challenging the domination of the UK's most popular soaps at
the top of the ratings; it ran for seven series from May 1986 until November
1991 and remains the most successful of all Lane's sitcoms.
Julia Hallam
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1. Modelling audition (1:25)
