A crass TV drama that is causing a girl too much pain

On Tuesday night, the BBC aired the first episode of The Moorside, a two-part dramatisation of events surrounding the disappearance of schoolgirl shannon Matthews in 2008. already there have been complaints that it is far too soon to serve up as entertainment a story based on a wretched series of incidents that shaped a young girl’s life and who is now trying to live a normal life. It is hard to disagree with that sentiment.

you might recall that the nine-year-old was missing for more than three weeks from The Moorside — a council housing estate on the outskirts of dewsbury, West yorkshire — before it emerged that it was her own mother Karen who had staged the kidnap, in collusion with the uncle of her then boyfriend.

Karen became known as Britain’s ‘most hated mum’, served half of an eight-year prison sentence and now lives under a different name in the south of england.

shannon was taken away from her mother and given a court-appointed new identity. she is somewhere out there in the shadowlands, with a new family, a better life and — no doubt — a strong desire to put the mistreatments of the past behind her.

yet here we are, churning up the godforsaken swamp for no good reason that anyone can think of, except to provide another star vehicle for sheridan smith, an actress who loves, she says, to ‘lose myself’ in the characters she portrays.

Roles have included Cilla Black, Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs’s wife, a woman with terminal cancer and now Karen Matthews’ friend Julie Bushby, an energetic neighbour who organises the searches for shannon.

Julie represents the good in a world gone bad, and the desire of BBC producers to present the working-class Moorside community in a positive light. no Benefits street-style poverty porn here, if you don’t mind.

Certainly, the drama provides a tremendous opportunity for the cast to go Full Metal Working Class. up on The Moorside, among the whirligig washing lines and pregnant teenagers, sheridan has a pocked and pasty complexion, a double chin, filthy nails and a dirty mouth.

‘Oh s**tcakes, I swore,’ she says, after making yet another TV appeal in a fleece.

KaRen MaTTHeWs (played by Gemma Whelan from Game Of Thrones) has impressive aubergines of pain painted under each eye, a regrettable pony-tail and an air that suggests she has been recently lobotomised.

From the panoply of lank and greasy locks sported by all of the fictional Moorside residents, it seems no one has washed their hair since Christmas eve.

everyone is wearing hoodies from Primark and the only people with proper shoes are the police — who soon become suspicious of mummy dearest.

a year earlier, another young girl disappeared. Three-year-old Madeleine McCann went missing from her parents’ holiday villa on the algarve.

appallingly, Karen Matthews had been inspired by this tragedy, hoping to get rich by sharing any putative reward money and possible media fees relating to shannon’s ‘disappearance’.

Calamitously stupid, I know, but consider that up until that point in her life, Karen (then aged 31) was entirely dependent on the state.

she had never worked, had no qualifications and seven children by five fathers.

Judge or don’t judge as you please, but it is clear that life happened to Karen, rather than the other way around. This mad money-making scheme was the closest she had ever come in her entire existence to having a strategy, a plan, a goal — and she is portrayed in The Moorside as catatonically dim rather than evil, which seems about right.

at one point, the son of her friend Julie wonders why the reward for information that might lead to shannon being found was only around £70,000, while the amount being offered in relation to Maddie was £2.5 million. ‘Is that because they’re posher than us?’ he asks. His mother replies: ‘It’s not a contest.’ Or is it? In another scene, while discussing how best to launch the media plea with a detective, Karen says: ‘I’ve got my cuddly bear that you wanted, like Maddie’s mum wants her Cuddle Cat [a reference to Maddie’s favourite toy].’

THe Karen Matthews character is shown in The Moorside clutching the stuffed toy in exactly the same way that shannon’s mother did in real life, which itself was a warped copycat of Kate McCann’s genuine televised pleas to her daughter Maddie’s abductor.

The McCanns were among the first to complain about The Moorside, accusing the BBC of poor taste and insensitivity.

Members of shannon’s family have also complained, with her grandparents calling the drama ‘sick and disgusting’.

There have also been eyebrows raised about the BBC’s failure to contact the families of some of those portrayed and of payments made by the producers to a number of the real-life characters involved in the original story who played cameo roles — all of which appears to breach BBC guidelines.

The point is that it is hard to see the point of The Moorside. It appears to be making no statement worthy of what was a human tragedy, except perhaps that working-class people, bless ’em, will pull together in times of adversity.

and, maybe, the wider point that if you continually appeal to the public for help in times of woe, then they become emotionally invested in your story and are not always ready to turn off their interest at a time that is convenient for everyone.

Inevitably, the broadcast has sparked fresh interest in the main protagonists — especially Karen. Meanwhile, enterprising locals are cashing in by touting tours of The Moorside estate at £15 a pop.

Poor shannon was eventually found 24 days later by police, concealed in the base of a divan bed in the grotty house where she’d been kept prisoner. at times, she had been drugged. she was tied with an elastic rope to prevent her escape.

Today, she is a young woman with a future — yet it is unlikely the fuss surrounding The Moorside has escaped her, no matter how brilliant all the actors are.

so forget for a moment the genuine grievances and cavils of everyone else involved in this misguided drama and focus on one thing: surely it can’t be right to drag shannon, even though she is living under a new identity, back to the events of that awful winter nine years ago?

It is too much, too soon. she has already suffered enough.