Country Strife (BBC3): SOME documentaries uplift and inspire. Others offer so little hope that they plunge you into a spiral of despair. Country Strife, the latest addition to the "it's grim up North" catalogue, belonged firmly in the latter category.

It followed two people living in "the beautiful English countryside of Consett", in the village of Leadgate, although we were warned this wasn't the countryside you see on the tourist maps.

The idea was firmly planted that this wouldn't be a jolly, isn't life wonderful? excursion but a trip into a world of unemployment, drugs and poverty. The really depressing thing was that by the end of the hour, things hadn't changed very much for the two protagonists.

Andrew "Arthur" Daley is a 23-year-old who wants to break the cycle of crime in his life. Anita is a 25-year-old ex-shoplifter and single mother trying to raise her family. He lives on his wits, she lives on the dole.

Twenty years after the closure of the steelworks, unemployment is double the national average in Consett. The town is in the top ten per cent of the most deprived areas of Britain. It's difficult to see how either of them can rise above their current circumstances.

Andrew earned the name Arthur, after Minder's wheeler-dealer Arthur Daley, for his reputation for being able to get anything you want. He sleeps on friends' sofas and warns: "If I don't get a job, I'm going to do something really naughty".

Anita's lot is no better. She's already had to give up one son for adoption and now has two young children and a boyfriend whom she hits. By the end of the programme, he'd moved out. The final straw was her hitting him with a pressure cooker.

She has the phrase: "Every passing second is a chance to change," tattooed on her arm but her violence, unwillingness to take help from social services and a liking for drink make change difficult. Her anti-social behaviour was put down to the loss of her son for adoption.

The reputation of Anita and her friend Emma, newly released from prison, goes before them. They are "well-known to the police and CCTV cameras" in the town, so shopping can be a problem. "It's like we're totally untrustworthy," said Anita. Consett used to be easy to shoplift from, she added. "If it wasn't nailed down, I'd keep it."

Consett was "a pretty crap town" but she'd rather she was there than in Middlesbrough or York. Having seen her behaviour, residents of those two cities probably sighed with relief that she was staying put.

And so it went on, an unrelieved catalogue of doom and gloom. At the end, Anita had started a new relationship and announced she was getting married this year. Arthur was still saying he was going to turn his life around. Life carried on much the same.

Published: 10/02/2005