What did the press think of youth work on the small screen? Joe Joseph in The Times got a bit excitable and Shakespearean as he related the dawning of the Duncan: "He realises that these rough-edged, swearing, smoking, troubled teenagers are human; that if you prick them they bleed; that they, too, have dreams."
The trouble was that the programme showed so little of what those dreams might be. Or much actual youth work intervention.
Some failed to recognise a distinctive thing called youth work. Two reviewers, in the Sunday Mirror and The Guardian, referred to it as social work.
This is hardly the youth workers' fault. They tried hard to point to the importance of relationships, of finding out what young people think and of challenging behaviour.
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