TV show from the past - Prospects'

If it’s not politics I blog about it is TV and film so today again via YouTube I fell upon some more TV gold from the past. I have been looking and trying to remember this show for years I just couldn’t place it would have helped if I have got the shows name right.

Out of the blue in my recommended file on my YouTube account, it was there, ‘Prospects’ the TV show I had been hunting for. It must have been because recently I have been searching around comedies and TV shows in that time period. Memories came flooding back it’s strange how that happens and I found myself remembering a lot more than I did before. Next plan is to re-watch them hopefully YouTube could help with that task. If I had the title of the show right in the first place, I may have come across it sooner. Also, if I’d had the channel it was shown on right in the first place that could have helped.

Based around London's Isle of Dogs it followed the exploits of two East End 'lads' Jimmy 'Pincy' Pince played by Gary Olsen and Bill 'Billy' Pearson played by Brian Bovell both unemployed. We see their trials and tribulations of making a living in the black market of cash in hand.

They were surviving during the grim days of Thatcher's Britain in the mid-eighties. It was not an overly hash has the BBC’s ‘Boys of the Black Stuff’ this had a more comical slant, dealt with unemployment, crime, poverty, regeneration, social change and racism.

Pincy and Billy

Pincy and Billy were surviving picking up the 'social/dole' (Government Benefits) while on the side they earned a few quid from the odd dodgy employer. They were also constantly coming up with some air-brained schemes to get rich quick but always failed. The opening scene of episode one was a classic. We see a group of men standing round communal washing lines outside a row of maisonettes and we soon find out why, they are waiting for their dole money. The postman turns up with a police dog handler to hand them out. They were getting to their money before the wife or girlfriend, normal so they can take out their ‘pocket money’ out. I remember myself hanging around the letterbox waiting for my giro to hit the floor and then rushing to the Post Office to cash it.

The show run for only 12 episodes usually centre on Pincey and Billy establishing a business funded with their dole cheques and any cash in hand money they could get together. Most of the plots were driven by Pincy with Billy doing little more than following round as his lackey, voicing only the occasional disapproval. Despite not being a rollicking laugh riot, there's enough humour to give the show a breezy, laddish charm taking the better plots into account, one well worth a visit.