The Sharp End
ABC TV, 8.30 p.m. Tuesdays
Reviewed by Tony Smith
During the great depression of the '30s, according to my grandfather, it was common to see families evicted from their homes by the "bailiffs". During the supposedly lesser depression of the '90s, some rural people have made a career of blocking auctions of farms where banks have foreclosed on mortgages.
Small wonder that Australians do not rank debt collectors highly among the professions. The situation is little better in Britain, although the television series The Sharp End may alter the negative image considerable.
Celia Forrest is left to run the collection agency when her father dies. Everyone advises her against it, particularly her chief rival. He is totally unethical — he finds people in debt and offers them short-term loans at exorbitant rates so that they can repay the original. Then his heavies move in to make sure that his investment is returned promptly and with appropriate interest.
Meanwhile, Celia presents the understanding human face of the industry. She makes allowances for genuine hard luck, and pursues wealthy debtors ruthlessly. This is a nice ploy. Debt collectors are shown in extremis, but the ruthless one is seen as an aberration. The "industry" should be funding this one. At least the debtors are a mixed lot, paralleling the mixed attitudes we have to debt.
But while the Forrest Collection Agency ought not to be allowed to put a gloss on the activity of bailiffs generally, there are some very redeeming qualities to the series.
Celia Forrest is a strong woman, and she deals with recognisably human problems very realistically. The cast include her recently widowed mother, her recently expelled daughter and her regularly violated secretary. In her relationships with these three, Celia provides a suitable antidote to the US family romances dumped on our impoverished commercial television markets.
So today's kids can actually see that, while mothers do not always win, they do have minds of their own, that there are seldom perfect solutions on hand to those generational conflicts, and that miraculous changes of lifestyle are unlikely to occur.
Celia's secretary, for example, lives in a filthy squat with a skinhead who has no respect for her. She is a pleasant, forgiving person, but is caught in the trap of being continually beaten by the one she loves. Why does she stay? There is no ready answer to this question.
Undoubted star of the program is Carmichael, initially a debtor but lately Celia's main collector. He is an unusual character, a tough who is occasionally beaten up, but who loves animals and is a nowledge. But Carmichael's most important feature is that he cannot read.
It is extremely rare in drama to encounter such a character. Yet, according to expert surveys, 10% of us lack the reading and writing skills necessary to function in our highly literate society.
Carmichael exhibits all the usual reactions. In the first instance, he points out that it is nobody else's business that he cannot read. In this he is correct, but if he claims the right to privacy, the chances of the problem being solved for him are slight. Change always seems to require that somebody suffers. Progress demands its martyrs.
Others around him show the classic inadequacies which beset most of us — assumptions that we can all read, that anyone who cannot is of inadequate intelligence, that anyone who cannot read damn well ought to learn, quick smart — if not they are letting the side down!
There is humour in The Sharp End, but it is mercifully free of the canned laughter which riddles most programs billed as comedy. Perhaps it is a Trojan horse for an industry of dubious ethics, but it is in most respects both enjoyable and realistic. While unlikely to become a cult series in the Minder mould, it is one of television's better current offerings. Catch it before it's repossessed.