Edna The Inebriate Woman is on iPlayer at the moment, a powerful piece from 1971 and I’d recommend anyone watch it.

Part play, part documentary, Edna centres on a homeless alcoholic woman (Played by Patricia Hayes) and her daily plight as she trudges from dosshouse to government departments to psychiatric wards. On her odyssey we see actual footage of the mid-20th century homeless and- if you remove the cloth caps- it’s barely distinguishable from now. We still find the homeless an embarrassment, we still rather they’d go away but we aren’t bothered enough to give them somewhere to go.

It’s definitely TV from a time when there was only a couple of channels; it shows the nation a problem that they can discuss later on their sofas or at work the next day (It even hints of a possible solution). You just don’t get that kind of thing any more.

On a sidenote, Edna also features a younger June Brown of Eastenders fame and the only known TV appearance of Vyvyan MacKerrell, the guy who was the direct inspiration of Withnail in Withnail & I.

(Thanks to Keith Allott for bringing Edna to my attention)