Holding it all together is Cooper, in what is sure to be a career-defining performance. Tough and frustrated, the star of This Country lets us feel sorry for her character but never allows it to tip over into pity. Costello is a woman who can handle herself, and Cooper’s unhesitant skill of switching from comedy to tragedy within the space of a scene is a marvel. One scene halfway through the series, in which Costello breaks down having had all her money stolen, took my breath away. I really urge everybody read this. And sit with your discomfort. Listen, learn, and stop falling for the poverty porn lies pedalled by our media, our government, and those who have more money than the people they hate could ever dream of. Writer Cash Carraway’s own experience of life on the breadline, and her avoidance of romanticising homelessness, keep the series firmly in reality (Photo: Simon Ridgway/Sid Gentle Films/HBO)

Daisy May Cooper plays a young working class single mum living with her ten year old daughter in the brutal lonely landscape of austerity Britain. She is angry about politicians sneering at the poor while owning the properties whose rents keep them in destitution; she is angry about “poverty porn” TV programmes that relish making an entertainment of the “economic gang rape that makes the poor and vulnerable the scapegoat for society’s decline”.She sees almost too clearly to bear how circumscribed her life is, just as her father’s was before her. She says his first question to the doctor, after being diagnosed with cancer, was: “How long will I be able to work?” “I don’t think that’s a question you should have to ask,” says Tara, furiously, opening up the world of generational poverty with a line of dialogue. She discusses areas of sex work that don’t usually get a lot of press: stripping, peep shows, telephone chat lines and a naked video app. She shares a detailed knowledge of household cleaners: semen stains on a dress must be attended to with a spray of Astonish Window and Glass. The smell of urine can be removed from the skin with vinegar. While some episodes are better than others, it is a uniformly strong lineup: never dull, always vivid and never descending into mere agitprop. They all feel like real glimpses into real lives, providing windows on to realities that are too infrequently (and inaccurately) depicted in drama. The underprivileged and disfranchised appear often in documentaries, of course, but rarely escape a framing as zoological specimens. I am a working class single mother myself - one of the reasons I was drawn to this book. But Cash’s life is not mine. I'm a scrounger, a liar, a hypocrite, a stain on society with no basic morals - or so they say. After all, what else do you call a working-class single mum in temporary accommodation?

Though their voices are very different, in some ways each woman’s journey to writing her book – their hoped-for route out of the situations they describe – is comparable. Both had challenging teenage years; both went to university; both took too many drugs and had disastrous relationships; both imagined they lived in a country with adequate safety nets for those prepared to work, and discovered in the decade of austerity and the benefits cap that they did not. One crucial fact, in the context of each, is precisely the same, however. In the 20-odd years since they came of age, average house prices in Britain have risen seven times faster than average wages. Along with millions of others, they are the casualties of that economic fact. Davies creates a life in which she “still feels skint but no longer poor” Alone, pregnant and living in a women's refuge, Cash Carraway couldn't vote in the 2010 general election that ushered austerity into Britain. Her voice had been silenced. Years later, she watched Grenfell burn from a women's refuge around the corner. What had changed? The vulnerable were still at the bottom of the heap, unheard. Without a stable home, without a steady income, without family support - how do you survive? This second mother and child story, of her relationship with her daughter, is the one pure thing in this dirty world, and her fierce love for “Biddy” the principal redeeming quality of Carraway, who would otherwise appear as bitter and cynical. Daisy May Cooper (This Country) is to star in the show, which is provisionally titled Cash Carraway. After the birth of her daughter, she has a landline fitted so that “in lieu of maternity leave” she can work as a telephone clairvoyant. She also earns extra income as, in turn, a mystery shopper, a low-level drug dealer, a cleaner and by selling her human-interest stories to the Daily Mail. “Poor women can’t afford morals,” she comments.On the beat … police officer Adam Naismith with police dog Wolf. Photograph: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan/Firecrest Films/BBC As this writer puts it “they lose their minds on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Christmas, all the days supposed to be spent with family” Cash lämnar mannen och ägnar sin graviditet att jobba ihop 10 000 pund på en peepshow, summan som behövs för att skaffa bostad och vara hemma med barnet. Men när dottern äntligen kommer blir Cash deprimerad och ensam och funderar på att ta sitt liv. Tyvärr blir det inte lättare, det blir värre. Cash Carraway tells you her story. The story of a single mother doing everything she can to survive. To The main characters are of Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese heritage, but Beef doesn’t focus exclusively on themes exploring race. Instead, it becomes more of a generalised comment on society (inequality; ennui; dreams broken and realised) and humanity (relationships; parenthood; ego; stress; sex). Just as Amy and Danny oscillate between sympathetic and deranged, the characters around them are also complicated: from Danny’s crypto-currency-obsessed brother, Paul (Young Mazino), to Amy’s drippy husband, George, played by Joseph Lee (“I’m micro-dosing my creativity”). Supporting characters (Maria Bello’s uber-wealthy White Lotus-esque monster; David Choe as an unhinged cousin) slot right in.