9 talking points from the new series of Benefits Street

The majority of the tight knit community on the Tilery Estate claim benefits, and the Channel 4 documentary takes a closer look at their lives.

Here were the major talking points of the first episode.

1. How pivotal a couple of members of a community can be. 

Best friends Julie Young and Sue Griffin have 11 children between them. Sue hasn’t worked for a year, Julie for 15, but looking after their neighbours has become a full time job. Their doors are open to everyone and Julie’s house has become somewhat of a community centre. She’s known for her no-nonsense attitude and being the go-to person for advice. While Julie and Sue regularly cook for people on the street, their neighbours do what they can to repay them.

2. Selling drugs probably isn’t the answer. 

With a lack of job prospects, Maxwell, 35, has turned to dealing cannabis (although we’re not sure for how much longer since it’s been broadcast on the telly). It’s safe to say viewers were pretty outraged to see Maxwell and his bong. He likes a sunbed too. He’s known as the ”King of the Kids” on the estate, and is a bit of a role model for them. Which is pretty worrying.

3. Doorstep lending to people on benefits is inevitably going to end in a lot of debt, harassment for repayment and exploitation. 

We saw the reality many people face when it comes to debt. Dot Taylor, 48, has been in and out for work while raising her five children, but when she’s short of cash she uses doorstep lenders. When she doesn’t have enough money to repay them she borrows money from other lenders, and they visit daily to ask for the payments.

4. If you need to make a court appearance, don’t stop for an ice lolly. 

Maxwell has a string of convictions already but we saw him miss his latest court date. He was 35 minutes late because he missed the bus getting an ice lolly, oh and he’d taken 10 diazepam.

5. The impact of the new government policy that puts people on a sanction if they miss a benefit appointment. 

Lee Nutley is in a pretty bad place, and it was hard to watch. He’s been on job seekers allowance for the past year after being laid off. Every appliance in his house seems to be broken and he’s just been refused a crisis loan, so he relies on his neighbours for cooking and laundry. We saw that Lee had been told he’d missed an appointment (which he denies) and his benefits have been cut from £90 a fortnight to nothing.  Viewers saw him struggle in a constant battle with anxiety, depression and epilepsy, while saying that he’d actually like to work.

6. What’s ‘poverty porn’ when it’s at home?

The residents laugh at a newspaper article about the filming of Benefit Street that calls it “poverty porn”, which they think is kind of hilarious. Maxwell asks: “So we’re porn stars now?”

7. Relations with the press aren’t great in the estate. 

We see Carol standing up to the local press taking pictures of the street. When the national press arrive after the story has been published, the boys of Kingston Road take a stand too. When the journalists say they don’t want to be photographed, the boys point out that it’s also not OK to point a camera in their face without permission either.

Meanwhile Dot is bemused by an article calling her “Orange Dot”, saying: “It’s natural! I think that’s shocking, my dad’s Indian.”

8. Sometimes there’s a very good reason for claiming benefits.

The producers leave it until the last 20 minutes of the show to tell us that Julie has been unemployed for 15 years because her son Regan is severely disabled with brain damage and needs round-the-clock care. She said of the crash team that saved him: “If i ever won the lottery they could have every penny of it.”

A scene where she sings “The first time ever I saw your face” to him left many a viewer with a tear in their eye. And everyone who’d previously slammed her for being a scrounger felt pretty bad right about now.

9. The residents didn’t take too kindly to their local MP. 

As the Channel 4 filming attracted local and national press, local MP Alex Cunningham gave an interview to one of the film crews saying that Benefits Street was exploiting the vulnerable and an intrusion into their private lives, before swiftly leaving the estate without talking to anyone.

Julie said: “He didn’t know we even existed before Benefits Street”. So Cunningham, the MP for Stockton North, decides to go around and talk to them for the first time. Which is seriously awkward because it SOMEHOW looks disingenuous. Cunningham asks why they’ve never gone to his surgery.  Sue points out they didn’t know who he is, they don’t have a car, and there’s no community centre.