1988 03 19 Smiths and "South", NME

TRACEY AND MOZZ - TRUE LOVE?

STREET CREDITED BY JAMES BROWN

“I’VE ALWAYS been a fan of public service broadcasts...” was about the only thing you could glean from Phil Redmond's lugubrious prelude to the screening of this for-schools-Brookside spin-off SOUTH. PSB’s are indeed a great notion, even though in truth what they bring to mind is all those mid-'70s animated crusades against 'litter-louts'. You forget that schools programmes fall into the public service domain.

As a PSB, South really swings, featuring a cameo by MORRISSEY. As an episode of Brookside it holds its own; it’s a non-suck version of the ghastly Damon And Debbie. If Damon and Debbie had swapped places with South stars TRACEY CORKHILL and JAMIE HENDERSON, they would have hit Piccadilly Circus fighting off the attentions of The Streets Of London' on the soundtrack.

The two gauche darlings Jamie and Tracey pack their spotted hankies to seek out a future (long-term plan) and Jazz, Jamie's glam - as opposed to glamorous - cousin (short-term plan).

Nice Rapide coach details... Jamie is pickpocketed within minutes of arriving, but since the whole tone has been apprehensive from the start, it's a relief that they get into the uh, big city downers right away.

The only duff scenes - the moments when things look set to mutate into an Aids warning or a lager commercial - are when they discover that Jazz and her employers (a dodgy health club) have taken up their fuscia lycras and walked from their insalubrious warehouse location.

Disillusioned, Tracey dashes off into the night and bumps into rent-a-wino partying round a cup of Salvation Army gruel; a small figure, a young kid like Tracey and Jamie, looks up dejectedly. “Say, didn't we see you in that smack advert..."

Bickering wretchedly, they head chez and that's when it really starts to rock because they're greeted by a youngish slouch (Santa) who accuses them of trying to sell him bog blue as an excuse to case the joint. “Be off!” he cries with graphic insistence.

Jazz has done a runner with the rent money but Santa’s live-in (another Tracey) takes pity and in they go.

Santa and Tracey are just the sort who give you the first leg up on to the hellish London accommodation ladder. They have no gas (hey, a Corkhill kinda pad!), a depressed baby and - though the camera fails to record this - evidence of spliff rolling on the carpet. This is the Lesson In Housing Difficulties.

Tracey and Jamie learn the hard way that there’s always someone more desperate than you, willing to be kicked in the teeth for a ha'penny’s consideration. They are shocked by Santa and Tracey's grim acquiescence of the injustices that constitute the outer wastelands of the free enterprise system. There are top rate scenes of miserable corruption in the world of dodgy casual labour agencies. Frank Vincent brilliantly portrays the cowed viciousness of the cornered rat who stands to gain from the system.

Of course episode two is what you really want to see: Tracey meets Morrissey in the foyer of Capital Radio; Morrissey handles being himself quite charmingly.

Tracey: “I know you. You're Morrissey!"

Morrissey: "I know," (smiles).

Outside later, Tracey shrieks, "I thought he was gonna ask me out... I nearly died!... maybe he was shy.”

What a lovely couple they’d make!

Anyway it’s all belting stuff. The end is sad without being depressing. Jamie emerges, surprisingly, as a sturdily sympathetic figure. He reminds you of a pit bull terrier on the verge of tears. Gulp. Anyway, what we want to know is will Tracey get her Morrissey! 

Brookside proper will take up the story...

South PartTwo, 10.30am on Monday March 21st on ITV as part of The English Programme.

Myrna Minkoff