"People who are in docu-soaps - the ones who are most in the public eye - start to lose what they really are. I don't want that; I'm not going to lose my identity. At the end of the day I'm still Jackie and I'm happy to be Jackie."

Paddington Green reviews

The Independent

Television Review: Paddington Green
29 December 1998

Another premature child of docu-soap parents emerged last night. Paddington Green (BBC1) was born of those prolific progenitors whose battery-farmed offspring speak before they think and may yet suffocate the free-range documentary. Last night's was unusual, however, and, to an extent, shrugged off its dubious parentage as it focused on a seamy cross- section of west London: a rude 85-year-old wig-maker, a shrill woman in a scooter shop and a prostitute formed an exotic triptych. At times it felt impressively realistic, but it was let down by an intrusive lens and Ross Kemp's voiceover. Occasionally, the latter was more Tiffany than Grant Mitchell, as when Jackie the transsexual prostitute was booking a room for piano practice. "Jackie's hiring a room for an hour... the piano rehearsal rooms." This was a bitchy pause which didn't respect its subject; a cheap shot which would have made Bianca squeal, but left me hot with indignation. An earlier image seemed to pass a crass judgment on Jackie as she bought some sheet music ("Bach or Handel, grade five," she asked). The camera couldn't help staring as she handed over a pounds 20 note, but what it was trying to say, I wasn't sure. That money has a different meaning for whores, perhaps, or that the only way for prostitutes to regain self-respect is to pay for it? It was a visual daydream on dirty money; who gave you that, it wondered crudely, and what did you do to get it?

Two Guardian reviews by Desmond Christy:

Last night's TV - Vice work if you can get it

January 5, 1999

The Cops were not real cops but they were sold as being more real than the real thing. Already there are adverts for a new police documentary series which tells us that now that we have seen The Cops we can see real cops in Mersey Blues, a documentary about a real police force. It can only be a matter of time before the fake thing, such as The Cops, appears more real than the real thing, such as Mersey Blues. We will have to wait until tomorrow night to find out how Mersey Blues measures up.

Meanwhile, soaps continue to do battle with docu-soaps. Paddington Green (BBC1) sounds like it might be somewhere like Camberwick Green but you don't find transsexual prostitutes working Camberwick Green. Paddington Green turns out to be a docu-soap about characters - oops, I mean real people - who live and work in the district between Oxford Street and Queensway. People like Jackie, who earns £200 a night as a prostitute.

Well, on a good night. But there are bad nights when she is arrested by the police and ends up with a pile of fines, which she then has to work even harder to pay off. We watched Jackie talking at the magistrates court about fines she owed, confiding to the viewer: "I actually can afford to pay them but I'm not going to pay for them." As if to prove that she has the money, we watched as she went on a Pretty Woman-style shopping spree. She slipped in and out of various dresses and took home a little black number. Her customers - "They are really frisky in the summer" - will like that. And who are her customers? She thinks of them as the boys at school who didn't want to stand next to her because then she was a he and a bit of a freak. Now, because she is slim and female, standing next to her is the least of what they want to do.

Jackie wants to earn more money so that she can have more surgery. Her appearance on Paddington Green, however, will probably result in magistrates giving her a very hard time (for not paying those fines on time) and the Inland Revenue taking a closer look at her earnings.

And will Paddington now be full of men on the lookout for her? It seems a heavy price to pay for not being born like other boys. Jackie thinks she is getting her own back on the boys/men who despised her as child. Most people watching will conclude that it is the the boys/men who have triumphed over her. I can't see how appearing on television will help her, but such considerations don't seem to matter too much to docu-soap- makers. It's only a film, isn't it?

Monday night offered a difficult choice for the prurient. What to do: watch a real prostitute on the BBC or turn over to ITV and see fictional ones in The Vice, a new cop show about the work of the Metropolitan Police vice squad? The life of a woman doesn't count for much in The Vice. Two were murdered in the first episode. The writer, Barry Simner, will stop at nothing. One of the prostitutes is murdered by a businessman pimp, as his teenage daughter, who has tracked the prostitute, listens through a door. Happens all the time, I'm sure.

But who cares about the crimes. The point of a modern cop show is usually the character of the star cop - and his girlfriend. The star of The Vice is Ken Stott, the enormously likeable Inspector Chappell of the vice squad. We found him living alone but had him fixed up with a girlfriend by the end of episode one. She's a psychiatrist, busting with insight. This will come in useful, as Chappell is half in love with the prostitutes he fails to protect. He is so sympathetic that he should give up the police, train as a shrink and come back as Cracker.

At this latitude there are few of us, thanks to Dava Sobell's best-selling book, that do not now know the story of longitude. As part of its Time season, Horizon (BBC2) has made a special programme devoted to John Harrison's clocks and his battle to win the £20,000 reward that Parliament offered to whoever could find longitude at sea and prove it on a voyage to the West Indies. Harrison was an extraordinary man. How many people could work on something for 25 years and then discard that work and set off in a completely different direction? This is what Harrison did when he realised that pocket watches rather than his big clocks were what he should be working on. Horizon explained everything perfectly, on land, at sea and in the heavens. As as George III might have said, By God, Sir, I shall see they get some credit.

A call from Bridget of Paddington Green - Last night's TV

January 12, 1999

If I moan about television programmes it is only reasonable that the people who make them should moan back at me. Bridget Sneyd, series producer for Paddington Green, a docu-soap made by Lion Films for the BBC, rang me last week to complain about my review of her programme.

Part of what I wrote was about Jackie, who is shown in the film working as a prostitute. Jackie used to be a boy. Now she is a woman. I wrote: "Will Paddington now be full of men on the look-out for her? It seems a heavy price to pay for not being born like other boys. Jackie thinks she is getting her own back on the boys/men who despised her as a child. Most people watching will conclude that it is the boys/men who have triumphed over her.

I can't see how appearing on television will help her, but such considerations don't seem to matter too much to docu-soap makers." It was the last sentence that Bridget - we are on first name terms now - objected to. Loads of consideration, she tells me, was given to Jackie's appearance in Paddington Green. Jackie is happy with everything that was shown. And she is no longer working the streets of Paddington but living in a hostel, so men who go looking for her will be disappointed.

Well, I suppose I could hide behind the word "seems" in my sentence and quibble that the viewer can't know any of this. Bridget thinks I should ring up and ask before saying such things, whereas I think life is short and television is endless. But perhaps I should just apologise.

Then I watched last night's edition of Paddington Green and had another conversation with Bridget. In this episode we see Jason, Paddington's Stakhanovite locksmith, visiting an old lady who was locked out of her kitchen. When Jason arrived, the old lady was not in. She rang him in his van and he went back to fix the lock. He promised to bring some keys around the next day. A while later we see Jason answering his mobile as he drives along. It is the old lady again. She clearly can't remember who Jason is or that he has fixed her lock. Jason, and the viewer, conclude that her memory is severely impaired. She's lost it, as Jason puts it.

Another "character" in Paddington Green is Mr Gilbert, who runs a wig shop. In his basement he prepares a compound that looks like lemon curd. It is Mr Gilbert's anti-ageing cream, which he hopes to market. Mr Gilbert, despite his anti-ageing cream, is getting on in years. In one scene he and an old lady discuss the possibility of selling his cream. The viewer must find this a droll moment - two wrinkled people discuss the merits of a cream that patently can't be working (presuming they have used it). Mr Gilbert knows just the person to test it on. But she's dead.

Bridget - by now becoming a character in my internal docu-soap - tells me Mr Gilbert is very happy with his appearance in Paddington Green. He believes passionately in his cream and I'm just indulging my prejudices when I think of Mr Gilbert as being hopelessly eccentric.

Bridget seems very Zen about all her characters. Given a room of eccentric people it is clear I would regard them all as bonkers and in need of care (which would include keeping them off television); Bridget and her cameras would look on them without prejudice (and spend lots of time weighing up the pros and cons of transmission).

Bridget thinks viewers regard the people in Paddington Green with a more kindly eye than I do. Who knows? I would not buy a pot of Mr Gilbert's anti- ageing cream (it's too late for me) but Bridget might, just to be nice to Mr Gilbert. Of course, he would give it to her, because he is thrilled with being on her programme. Everyone in Paddington Green would side with Bridget. This proves to me that they all lack insight into how they appear to viewers. Like Mr Gilbert I stick to this eccentric belief and Bridget, I'm sure, will be Zen about that too.

Police get tough with kerb-crawlers

by Justin Davenport

Police are to film kerb-crawlers in a notorious London red-light district in a major vice clean-up operation launched today.

They will target motorists kerb crawling in Sussex Gardens, the area worked by transsexual prostitute Jackie McAuliffe, who featured in the Paddington Green BBC TV documentary.

The initiative is the latest in a series of efforts by police to tackle the street prostitution problem that is plaguing residents.

Police believe the problem may have worsened as a result of the TV programme, with a number of people being attracted to Sussex Gardens to look for Jackie, who was observed in the TV series touting for business while she kept her gin and tonic in a handy junction box.

Tonight, officers will film motorists who are spotted frequently driving around the area. Car drivers will then be stopped and told the details of their vehicles are on police video.

As many as 50 street walkers are believed to work in the area on a regular basis and there are constant complaints from local residents.

Sgt Kevin Griffin, in charge of the vice squad at Paddington Green, said: "This has been a red-light district since time immemorial, we cannot hope to put a full stop to it, but we can try and control it." He said the main aim of the video operation was to deter kerb crawlers from using the area.

Jackie, 28, is among a number of prostitutes who are regularly encountered by the vice squad patrols from Paddington Green police station.

Sgt Griffin said: "Her appearance on the TV programme has probably encouraged a lot of sightseers, though I don't know how many of those are just being nosy or are people who have come for sex."

He thought there were some people who would have been shocked to dis-cover the sexual identity of the woman they had been with.

"I imagine she has enticed other more specialist kerb crawlers," he added.

He said that police would be carrying out the video operation tonight and tomorrow. In addition, there would be signs warning motorists that there was a police vice operation in progress.

"We will be targeting people who drive around the block several times, rather than motorists who just drive from a to b."

B for bargain bucket

Nancy Banks-Smith
Guardian, Thursday June 10, 1999

Jackie, the transsexual prostitute, has a new, tip-tilted £4,000 nose, new hair colour and new nails on her fluttering fingers ("I use my hands a lot in my work"), but the oddest novelty is her accent, which takes a mad stab at Manchester, like Daphne in Frasier.

"All of a sudden it turned northern. I can't get rid of it now I've got it. Like an itch."

The last thing we heard was Jackie giving a punter a false name. She has shed her skin like a snake but, as she said with sudden, sad insight: "I think my problem is inside more than outside."

Sunday Express Tv Guide

By Lucy Sweet, june 13, 1999, Page 105

Soap opera is all very well, but the first in the new series of PADDINGTON GREEN (BBC1, Wed) showed that there's more material in the small tragedies of everyday life than a tube train full of Maffews.

Although there are others involved it's really about Jackie the sex-change prostitute, who is undergoing her next bout of surgery. When I first watched this show, I couldn't think of anything more exploitative than a docusoap about a transsexual working the streets. But rather than using her as bait, it shows Jackie in a deeply sympathetic light. It also seeks to make a point about her need to live in an anonymous city where millions go to seek their identities.

It's the concentration on the way people fit into their surroundings that makes this programme a lot more interesting than following the trials and tribulations of holiday reps or air hostesses.

And Jackie is a brilliant subject. Battered, but immensely striking she has a vulnerability distinctly lacking from other docusoaps full of people who want to be famous. You get the feeling that Paddington Green might well turn out to be a valuable social document in the tradition of The Family or Seven Up, rather than just a bunch of idiots who work on a cruise ship, gurning for the cameras.

The pleasure dome

Kathryn Flett
Observer, Sunday August 1, 1999

Simultaneously, over on BBC1, Paddington Green 's transsexual prostitute, Jackie, had divested herself of her home and most of her belongings and, on holiday in Greece, was trying to buy herself something quite refreshing - emotional space. On her last night, though - drunk, mascara-smeared, lonely - she admitted that 'I don't want them to fuck me. I want them to like me. But men don't do that, do they?'

Caught in the Act

Mark Lawson, The Guardian, Monday August 7, 2000

But whatever the shared narrative methods of soap and docu-soap, the factual version has noticeably failed to emulate the longevity and addictiveness of the dramatic form. Critical derision has trimmed back commissions of a genre which briefly filled the schedules, and you feel that the fourth series of Paddington Green (Tuesday, 10.20pm, BBC1) is approaching our homes with the welcome expectations of a Jehovah's Witness.

BBC pledges to cut down docu-soaps

BBC1 bosses have committed themselves to reducing the number of docu-soaps in their schedules and have promised never to put Question Time out later than 10.30pm. Their declaration will put under threat a number of BBC docusoaps including Paddington Green, the series which launched the singing career of transexual prostitute Jackie McAuliffe, and Airport which made Jeremy Spake, the Aeroflot ground staff manager, into a national figure.