Civic opposition, denied permits and a council fine haven’t got in the way of controversial documentary series Struggle Street, with SBS revealing the first trailer for the second season, which will premiere at the end of November.
Shot over six months in suburbs of high socioeconomic disadvantage, including Inala in Queensland and Broadmeadows and Seddon in Victoria, the series will again feature personal stories of hardship and triumph – but with a broader focus on national systemic issues, and twice the runtime.
SBS’s director of TV and online content, Marshall Heald, said at a press event the show makes for “confronting television”.
“These are not easy stories for us to hear, but they’re the ones we need to listen to the most,” he said. “Sometimes when facts don’t persuade, feelings do.”
Struggle Street’s first season, which focused on families living on the public housing estates of Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west, reached a record audience for SBS and was well-received by critics when it premiered in May 2015.
But after viewing a promo (featuring a participant loudly farting, a scene which was subsequently edited out) as well as the first episode, Blacktown mayor Stephen Bali, council members and some documentary subjects led a garbage truck blockade of the SBS head office, in a protest against what Bali deemed “poverty porn”. The series was criticised as “sensationalist” and biased, with one subject, Peta Kennedy, saying, “This has ruined my life ... I hate being called a houso, I hate being called a bogan and I will not stand for my family being attacked.”
Anticipating that the second series would tread similar ground, councils in Queensland and Melbourne denied filming permits to production house KEO Films this year, with the Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk saying she feared the show would “see families ridiculed on national television”.
“I don’t support shows that seek to intimidate people or misrepresent the lives people lead,” Palaszczuk told Guardian Australia.
The Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk also expressed “grave concerns” over the second series, and encouraged residents in the disadvantaged suburb of Inala to notify the council if they saw anyone filming in public. A representative from Quirk’s office said “his position has not changed”. Neither Quirk nor Palaszczukhave seen the new season.
Heald said, unlike season one, the second season is “not a program about a particular suburb or area. It’s a much broader national issue, and a sample of poverty in every corner of Australia.”
He said the pushback from politicians was “perhaps understandable” due to the “public policy aspect”; the show highlights systemic problems of socioeconomic inequality that have yet to be solved, including intersections between poverty, unemployment, homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness, race and disability. In the two years since the first season aired, for instance, the number of Australians living in poverty has risen from 2.5 million to 3 million.
“Using [filming permits] to effectively stop stories being told is not something that we’re comfortable with, as a public broadcaster,” Heald said. KEO films are currently facing a fine for filming in Brisbane city council, the legality of which is being contested. “I think it’s fair to say the councils didn’t go out of their way to make it easier for us ... but we just went about our business,” said David Galloway, KEO Films’s executive producer.
The second season, which received funding support from Screen Australia and Film Victoria, is twice the length of the first, comprising six hour-long episodes, with the aim to give more space to participants’ backstories.
The first episode, shown to journalists last week, introduces viewers to recovering drug addict Michael, who was disowned by his family and lives in poverty in Seddon. In a heartbreaking sequence, the camera follows him to his mother’s funeral, as he steels himself, through tears, with longnecks of beer. We also meet Indigenous woman Norma, who provides shelter for Indigenous youth despite living in poverty herself, but who is kicked out of public housing after her pregnant daughter is found in possession of marijuana. Her community comes together to support her, fronting up to the local housing authorities in protest.
“When we came to a second series we thought about ways we could improve it,” Heald said. “We’ve gone to a longer duration, to try and give some greater depth and context to the stories; and we’ve shot across multiple locations to reinforce that these are big, national issues ...
“While there was controversy around season one, we were incredibly proud of the debate and disucssion that the show created, and wanted to replicate that with season two.”
Galloway said each participant was eager to tell their story, and some were followed for up to six months. “We were very careful and keen to tell the backstories as well, so the audience would have a greater understanding of how a lot of people end up in really difficult, challenging circumstances,” he said. The people featured in Struggle Street have not yet seen their scenes.
Struggle Street will be supported by a live discussion show on SBS, a special about young people living in poverty on The Feed, and a story about Norma and Indigenous housing on NITV’s The Point. “We’re working to provide context and resources around all the issues,” SBS head of unscripted content John Godfrey said. “We’re going to be examining it and exploring it from all sorts of angles.”
Godfrey said any changes they had made to the show had nothing to do with backlash to the first season.
“Just like any series, it was a first series, and there’s learnings from the first series. It’s as simple as that,” he said.
- Struggle Street’s second series will premiere on Tuesday 28 November, at 8.30pm on SBS
