Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 April 2010 07:55:27
Last night I sat down with Third Party to watch "Five Daughters", a deeply moving drama based on the story of "The Ipswich Murders" in late 2006. This review by BBC Suffolk includes some explanation by the writer about what he was trying to do, show that these girls were ordinary people and the issues around the sex and drugs trades are things which weren't unique to Suffolk, they are pretty much everywhere.
One of the myths that these murders exploded and that the programme shows well is that many of those involved in the sex trade in Ipswich were locals. This was something that the town had to acknowledge as a result of this tragedy, something that was known but had previously been denied in a collective false consciousness, with local newspaper articles and so forth concentrating on girls from the Midlands who had come down to the town. If anything good can come out of a tragedy like this one of the things that has is the Somebody's Daughter memorial fund.
The programme, which is on over three nights was filmed in Bristol, for obvious reasons filming in Ipswich would have been far to sensitive. This, I think, led to the only fault with the programme - the accents. It was set in Ipswich (Tractor Land for regular readers), but only the drugs counsellor had a Suffolk accent. Sarah Lancashire, (who got the Ipswich lower class mum look just right) and the person playing her daughter occassionally attempted a regional accent but both used West Country rather than East Anglian accents. Other lesser characters, occassionally tried I noticed, but even their best attempts were Mummerset with a hint of Norfolk. In someways, I think what would have worked best was what was done by most...a generic southern accent which highlighted this was Ipswich but could have been anywhere.
In terms of local reaction, and most importantly the view of the families on the programme The Evening Start, (the Ipswich local paper) had this story, which I guess sums it up. In every event like this there will be those who will want to mourn and heal in peace and others who will want another side of the story shown. What I think is important to remember is that this may be billed as a "drama" but it relates to the lives of five young people whose lives were taken from them by murder but also by drugs. It relates to friends of people like my brother who'd grown up knowing some of them. As we watch this let us pray for those who were impacted by these deaths and are still healing, those girls who are still working those streets and others up and down our country and around our world and finally for those people whose lives drugs effect and those working with them to help them.
Lord have mercy on them all.