TV production companies that seek to film ‘cheap and tawdry’ documentaries in Barking and Dagenham have angered the borough’s council leader.
Barking and Dagenham Council leader Liam Smith is angry that researchers and producers from independent TV companies, keep approaching the council to film ‘problem families and unscrupulous traders’ or focus on ‘crime, grime and worklessness’ using the borough as a backdrop.
In the last year the borough has featured on – Tower Block of Commons, Grimebusters and Fairy Job Mother and the council is regularly approached by independent production companies to film in the borough.
Cllr Smith believes programme makers are doing Barking and Dagenham a disservice by ‘talking down the borough’ and using the area to ‘showcase’ poverty and despair.
He said: “I’m heartily sick that some tv producers see Barking and Dagenham as an ideal location for cheap and tawdry documentaries that do nothing to portray life in the borough as it really is for the vast majority of local residents.
"Deliberately or unwittingly these programmes help perpetuate a very negative and very inaccurate image of our borough. If all you did was watch these doom and gloom tv shows, you’d get a very different impression of the borough than exists in reality.”
Cllr Smith (pictured right) believes that the downbeat portrayal of local communities is damaging the reputation of Barking and Dagenham.
“This is self perpetuating. If the only time local residents see their community on television, it is shown in a negative light, then it is bound to have a knock-on effect on how they themselves view where they live,” he said.
“The vast majority of local people take a genuine pride in where they live. It would be nice if television companies realise that our borough isn’t the bleak and backward place they seek to portray it as.”