Welcome to another edition of the infrequent and grainy Catherine Cookson Experience, in which I try to explain why, in the mid-1990s, the BBC lost its marbles and decided to film as many of these low-budget potboilers as they possibly could before some enormous sky-clock ran out (which is as good an explanation as any for why these happened).

Because there is a thin line between hilariously terrible and normal-terrible, many of these Cooksons are not as fun as others. There are those whose cheese is appealing (The Rag Nymph), and those that are genuinely enjoyable (The Wingless Bird). Then there are those that are, say, The Round Tower.

Then there is The Fifteen Streets.

This dismal, awkward screenshot pretty much sums up The Fifteen Streets, which ostensibly follows a family of dockworkers from East Tynside and their class and religious issues, but really there’s just a Protestant mystic and a fair and a bunch of iffy child actors and a posse of idle neighbors that is always crowing the frame and two leads who do an indifferent job of things except when it comes to sucking face, which they are allllll over; of all the Cooksons, most of which seal the deal with a chaste peck, this is by far the sucking-face-est. Many of the plot points that end in tragedy (which is all of them, this whole thing is a tragedy) go sour as if to spite the two of them for having wandered onto a frigid beach to neck and not supervising anything else that’s going on.

Vital Stats:

Era: 1900-ish.
Heroine: John O’Brien, technically, though this whole thing is such a plot soup of terrible decisions that really, no one deserves to be considered heroic.
Siblings that require looking-after: Endless, confusing, nebulous siblings. Also Sean Bean.
Illegitimate (Self or sibling): Negative.
Asshole Father?: You know, technically yes, but that is the least of this Cookson’s problems.
Romantic interest(s): Anne of Avonlea.
Bairnsketballs: Two!
Fistfights: This entire effin’ thing is one big fistfight.
Assaults: Oh gosh. One offscreen, one bizarre piece of nonsense onscreen that we will get into when we get there.

Shall we?

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