Paradise Street

There are 268 streets called Paradise in Britain today. In 1965 there were 57. Documentary director Charlie Squires decided to base a film on two of them: Paradise Street in Newcastle-on-Tyne and Paradise Road in Stockwell, London. The resulting programme is an excellent example of the particular brand of authored, impressionistic TV documentary that emerged in the early 1960s.

The individual voice and non-reportage approach of Squires chimed with the work of his more famous peers, Philip Donnellan and Denis Mitchell. Collectively they (and other young documentary directors working in TV in the late 1950s and 60s) attracted widespread favourable criticism and drew comparisons with the innovative British Documentary Movement of the 1930s and 40s. Squires was keen to document the minutiae of the everyday lives of his subjects and he and his team became part of the furniture in the homes of the families for a few months. In a contemporary Radio Times article Squires described himself as a Cockney "who lived on Mother Kelly's doorstep" (referring to G.A. Stevens' famous music hall number 'On Mother Kelly's Doorstep Down Paradise Row'); so he probably blended quite comfortably into the worlds of the Geordie shipwright and the Covent Garden market porter.