Alan Bleasdale

Alan Bleasdale is a Liverpool-born dramatist and screenwriter whose work includes Boys from the Blackstuff, G.B.H. and No Surrender. His earlier writing included radio stories about the character Scully and work for the Liverpool Playhouse and Manchester's Contact Theatre.

Boys from the Blackstuff, first broadcast on BBC Two in 1982, followed unemployed former tarmac workers in Liverpool. A sequel to his television play The Black Stuff, it combined social observation and black comedy in its portrayal of unemployment and family strain. Although widely received as a response to Thatcherism, much of the series was written before Margaret Thatcher became prime minister.