On the edge: the Irish in Britain as a troubled and troubling presence in the work of Jimmy McGovern and Alan Bleasdale

Abstract

Irish-born characters and characters whose names indicate Irish descent recur in the television and film work of Liverpool writers Jimmy McGovern and Alan Bleasdale. Their frequently troublesome dramatic presence often marks them as alien or marginal but problematic elements within British society, or suggests a troubled past and characteristic psychic dysfunction. Bleasdale's have been depicted somewhat stereotypically as economically parasitic and anachronistically maintaining outmoded religious beliefs incompatible with the material interests of the working class. By contrast, McGovern has frequently used his ‘Irish’ characters to engage critically with his own ‘Liverpool Irish’ Catholicism and as the focal point for his distinctively moral vision of British society.