Morning in the Streets

Morning in the Streets is a BBC television documentary directed by Denis Mitchell and Roy Harris in 1959, for the BBC Northern Film Unit. It was broadcast on 25 March 1959. The documentary was described simply as "an impression of life and opinion in the back streets of a northern city in the morning". It is an impressionistic slice-of-life documentary, featuring footage of working-class people and street scenes, accompanied by a montage soundtrack of voices conveying opinions and philosophies on life. The film was researched by a well-known writer on Liverpool life and dialect Frank Shaw. It is one of the few televisual documents to reflect the post-war austerity felt by areas such as Liverpool in the 1950s, puncturing the myth of post-war cross-class affluence. The music was specially composed by Thomas Henderson and Liverpool songwriter Stan Kelly, and featured the harmonica of classical musician Tommy Reilly.