Synopsis:

Filmmaker Penny Woolcock collaborates with the residents of housing estates in Leeds in this powerful mixture of drama and documentary filmmaking. The film is a dramatisation based on real stories of survival in the marginal economy of housing estate life and culture. The characters are not professional actors, but residents of the local estates, who improvise each scene, having been provided with a rough script written by Woolcock that is based on their lives. The reality conveyed is thus not true in the conventional sense, but portrays a true representative of a certain section of Britain's growing underclass. The story is about Tina, a resourceful single mum, who sets up a "shopping service" when she realises that few on the estate have enough money to buy things in the shops. Her business involves collecting orders for her weekly trip to Leeds where she steals the goods and sells them for half price. We enter into Tina's world on the estate encountering her dad who is the godfather of the area, known as "Don" and well-read, knowledgeable and one step ahead of the police; Aaron, Tina's drug-addict boyfriend; the young lads Shane, Porky and Verbal who steal cars and joy-ride them; and Queenie, a mum of eleven kids who is thousands of pounds in debt but puts on quite a performance when the unpleasant debt-collector comes round to exact both dues and revenge.