Struggle Street
SBS, Wednesdays, 8.30pm
THE world jumped on SBS last week – and now the attackers have got egg on their faces.
Controversial SBS doco “Struggle Street“ was much maligned, before it had even aired.
After the first episode’s screening, the critics largely shut up.
Because – newsflash – there was nothing the least bit unfair, contrived, staged or misrepresented about this fly-on-the-wall look at the lives of some troubled souls in Mt Druitt, in Sydney’s western suburbs.
Behind all the hype, this was no “Housos”. What viewers got was a careful and nuanced view of some people who are doing it pretty hard.
Admittedly, the narration by actor David Field was pretty naff in parts.
But the rest of the program represented some hard work, rather than cliched laziness.
I was surprised to see a young Aboriginal man living in a humpy in the bush, killing birds with a slingshot, so close to the heart of Australia’s biggest city.
Similarly, it was eye-opening to watch a couple – the woman heavily pregnant – using a bent Samurai sword to break into a room in their house to secure a cone piece for a bong. You just don’t see that every day.
Much of the opening stanza focused on one troubled welfare family, and their voluminous, largely unemployed offspring.
SBS has brought us a part of Australia most of us never see – and they deserve credit for that.
And the problems they’ve raised are so complex and multi-faceted that they really defy solution.
It will be interesting to see where they take this, but for the moment at least, they deserve credit for what they’ve put into it.
As for the critics – well, maybe next time have a little taste of the pudding before you mount your high horse and mix your metaphors …
– Jason Beck
