The Street: The Complete First Season

Set in a working-class suburban neighborhood in northern England, this highly acclaimed BBC drama tries very hard to be profound but is merely heavy-handed. Watching The Street—with its interlaced subplots involving crisis, conflict, betrayal, and domestic discord of various stripes—it's hard not to be reminded of such films as American Beauty, with its depiction of suburbia as a vast wasteland of meaningless lives, shameful secrets, and phony bonhomie (the overarching idea is that “normal” or “average” families are often spiritually and morally bankrupt). The Street has more than its share of dysfunctional families and duplicitous friends, buoyed by performances that are uniformly excellent from a splendid cast that includes such accomplished British character actors as Jane Horrocks, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Spall, David Schofield, and Sue Johnston. But the unrelenting donnybrooks become wearisome (and ultimately off-putting), while the angst is always palpable as the players drag themselves from crisis to crisis with hangdog attitudes that seem all the more incongruous for the occasional happy endings contrived by writer Jimmy McGovern (TV's Cracker, Priest). The six episodes in this 2006 first season make for an interesting misfire, but it's a misfire all the same. Not a necessary purchase. (E. Hulse)