At every turn the lying, cheating, work-shy, law-breaking, thief portrayed by Sheridan is rarely brought to task for anything done wrong. Not only that, but when she gets away with something we are treated to anthemic 'feel good' soul music to reinforce how well she's doing. I couldn't believe what I was watching in the first episode, and only hoping that perhaps the character might 'clean up' their act, but to no avail after 6 episodes.
I can't fathom how the creators of this series felt that the character causing a car accident whilst playing with a phone and then then speeding off with absolutely no further comment or repercussion on this act was 'OK'. But of course, that's just the start... we hear the character is a hard-working cleaner but one that spends a lot of her 'working' hours feeding an addiction or breaking into and bugging offices and listening in to conversations. Lying to teachers in front of her children, breaking into and stealing from a private clients home, stealing money from friends and family at every turn, deceiving those closest to her to save face. Again, all of these with little to know comeuppance and often accompanied by "Go-girl!" music.
The worst part of all this is the last episode. We are now left with a message that Gamblers Anonymous is 'a dangerous place to go' and really, you don't need it even though you have a crippling addiction. In fact, it alludes that she has solved her addiction problems and the daughter who was desperately trying to get Mum to GA meetings now is proud of her... why? Because she's set up a cleaning business with the sole intent of stealing information from legal and financial companies and committing further crime by leveraging insider trading.
But of course everything's OK... because they played more life affirming Aretha-esque music.
ITV should be ashamed of this. Sheridan is a thousand times better than this.
Review of Cleaning Up
