---
title: "The Street"
year: 2006
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/the-street"
fi1m_id: "the-street"
imdb_id: "tt0472984"
tmdb_id: 17340
wikidata_id: "Q7766990"
fi1m_score: 74
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-09-17"
updated: "2026-09-20T21:00:09.217142+00:00"
region: "IL"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The Street (2006)

Created by Jimmy McGovern · 1h 00m · Drama

## Identity

The Street

- **Canonical:** https://film.one/tv/the-street
- **Type:** Series
- **Fi1m ID:** the-street
- **IMDb ID:** tt0472984
- **TMDB ID:** 17340
- **Wikidata ID:** Q7766990
- **Same entity:** https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472984/, https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/17340, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7766990

**Fi1m score: 74** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Six front doors, six catastrophes, and nobody on the whole terrace is allowed a joke

> Jimmy McGovern’s anthology of one Manchester terrace is television built on kitchen tables and bad decisions, acted with rare honesty by a cast that reads like a roll call. It is often devastating. It would be better still if it let anyone laugh.

## Synopsis

A red-brick terrace in Manchester, one front door at a time. In the first hour, Angela Quinn (Jane Horrocks), a wife and mother, is sleeping with a married man from over the road and getting away with it. Then her young daughter is knocked down by a car outside the house and does not wake up, and Angela must sit at the bedside with her husband and keep the secret that would finish them. The same pavement is home to Eddie and Margie McEvoy (Timothy Spall and Ger Ryan), Sean and Yvonne O’Neill (Lee Ingleby and Christine Bottomley) and Stan McDermott (Jim Broadbent), each of whom will get an hour of their own before the six are done.

## Review

Jimmy McGovern’s idea fits on a postcard. Take one terrace in Manchester and, each week, walk through a different front door. The first run of six hours was shown from 13 April 2006, and two further runs of six followed. Behind every door is a household in ordinary trouble that turns, over sixty minutes, into the kind you cannot come back from. It is blunt, it is sometimes preachy, and it is often as honest as British television gets about what people say to each other in kitchens. We recommend it, an hour at a time.

The first hour belongs to Jane Horrocks. Angela Quinn is having an affair with a man over the road, and she is enjoying it, which McGovern is careful to show before he takes it away. Then her daughter is hit by a car outside the house and does not wake up. What follows is not a hospital drama; it is a woman sitting beside a bed, making tea for her husband and trying to keep her face straight. We were wrecked by the end of it, and it was not the drip and the monitors that did it but Horrocks, saying almost nothing, trying to be a good wife while carrying a secret that would end the marriage.

The cast list reads like a roll call. Timothy Spall and Ger Ryan are Eddie and Margie McEvoy; Lee Ingleby and Christine Bottomley are Sean and Yvonne O’Neill; Jim Broadbent is Stan McDermott; Neil Dudgeon, David Schofield and Jody Latham take other doors. Across the three runs Bob Hoskins, Anna Friel and Stephen Graham turn up too. None of them are asked to be charming. Spall does the thing only he does, the large face going slowly still while a decision is made behind it, and Broadbent plays Stan as a man who has stopped expecting to be consulted about anything. Nobody is acting for the back row.

Fabian Wagner and Ben Smithard shoot it in flat northern daylight, through doorways and over the backs of sofas, and they have not tidied anything up. The wallpaper is the wallpaper people actually chose. David Blair directs by staying on a face a beat after the line has landed, which is where most of the damage in this series happens. There is no gloss and there is no grime either; it looks like a street.

Now the caveats. McGovern has never trusted an audience to draw its own conclusion when a character could draw it for them, and in the first run there is a speech, delivered straight and at length, that tells us what the hour has already shown. We winced. The other trouble is bigger. For a terrace full of Mancunians this is an almost laughless place, and real people in real grief make jokes, bad ones, at the worst possible moment; it is one of the truest things about them, and the series will not allow it. Six hours of unrelieved bad news is a lot to ask, and the format, one household and out, means a thin hour has nowhere to hide.

McGovern’s people have always been cornered by one wrong turn, from [*Cracker*](https://film.one/tv/cracker) (1993) on, and the anthology shape suits him better than it has any right to. He shares the writing with Daniel Brocklehurst, Marc Pye and Alice Nutter, and the seams barely show; the voice is his, direct and unforgiving, all the way down the street.

Take it one door at a time and take a night off between. Watched in a run it flattens into misery; watched as it was made, an hour and then a night’s sleep, each household gets the weight it deserves.

*Fi1m score 74, published 17 September 2026.*

## Straight answers

**Is The Street worth watching?**

*The Street* is worth watching for anyone who can take an hour of plain, honest domestic grief at a time, and we scored it 74. Jimmy McGovern's anthology of one Manchester terrace is acted with rare truth by Jane Horrocks, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent, and the first hour wrecked us. It is almost laughless and sometimes preachy, so watch one door a night rather than in a run.

**How long is The Street, and what is it rated?**

*The Street* has episodes of about 1h 00m. It is a drama series.

**Where can I watch The Street in Israel?**

*The Street* is not on any streaming or rental service in Israel at the moment. It is available in 3 other countries; change your country at the top of the page to see where. Availability is checked daily.

### Reviews we read (1)

- **The Guardian**, Andrew Anthony (70/100, inferred): The review praises McGovern's new six-part series for creating kinetic drama from humdrum situations and achieving moments of movingly brittle truth, especially in the emotional heights of a child's coma storyline and the fine cast's performances. It criticizes the writer for a needless moralizing speech and for resisting humour that could have balanced the grim tone. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/observer/review/story/0,,1754541,00.html)

## Details

- **Created by:** Jimmy McGovern
- **Creator:** Jimmy McGovern
- **Director:** David Blair
- **Writer:** Danny Brocklehurst, Jimmy McGovern, Alice Nutter, Marc Pye
- **Cinematography:** Fabian Wagner, Ben Smithard
- **Producer:** John Chapman, Ken Horn, Matthew Bird
- **Cast:** Timothy Spall as Eddie McEvoy; Ger Ryan as Margie McEvoy; Christine Bottomley as Yvonne O'Neill; Anna Friel as Dee; Neil Dudgeon as Brian Peterson; David Schofield as John Roberts; Jody Latham as Billy Roberts; Lee Ingleby as Sean O'Neill
- **Runtime:** 1h 00m
- **Release (Israel):** 13 April 2006
- **Genres:** Drama

## Where to watch in Israel

Not streaming, renting or buying in Israel at the last check.

Also available in: CA, GB, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Dekalog* (1988): One Warsaw housing block, ten households, and the same refusal to look away.
- *Boys from the Blackstuff* (1982): Alan Bleasdale’s Liverpool, where the misery is just as deep and the jokes are allowed.
- *Clocking Off* (2000), Fi1m 82: A Manchester factory floor, a different worker each week, and a lighter hand on the lever. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/clocking-off.md)
- *Accused* (2010): McGovern again, one defendant an episode, and the moral cornering even tighter.
- *Scenes from a Marriage* (1973): Bergman proves two people in one flat can be more frightening than any street.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/the-street