The Clean Up (2024)

The Clean Up

Last month Sheridan Smith starred in the relentlessly harsh but brilliant Care, Jimmy McGovern’s latest site of social anger. This week she gives herself and us a break with Cleaning Up (ITV), a six-part series which is somewhere near romp/soap territory and pairs very agreeably with a large gin and tonic.

I thought it must be a true story at first this is about a cleaner in a financial firm who discovers there is money to be made from the information she has inadvertent access to as one of the invisibles on whom the smooth-running cleanliness of the place relies because I’m amazed it doesn’t happen every day, having done some temping when I was 18.

Employers really do not see you. Many’s the time I’ve photocopied confidential documents, updated spreadsheets, logged into a computer that contained more corporate secrets than MI6 in order to update someone’s diary or otherwise clapped eyes on information that could have changed my life if only I’d had the wit to know what to do with it, and the balls to try.

Fortunately Sam (Smith) has both. She is a harassed! But loving! But cash-strapped! But good-hearted! But gambling app-addicted and debt-ridden! But hardworking! single mother of two girls, one of whom Alice has got into “one of the top dance schools in the country!” with all the expense that will entail. She split up with her husband over her debt-accruals and gambling, plus his banging his massage therapist; now he wants custody of the kids on the grounds that she’ll probably sell their hair for another spin on cyber-roulette.

If she could only get a break! A financier staying late at the office chatting on the phone about an illegal deal which would see him in prison for seven years if he got caught? Taking her cue from a previous move that saw her disguise stubborn carpet stains with marker pen, surreptitiously swap out another client’s eco-cleaning liquid guff for proper bleach and lie convincingly to a loan shark who was hassling her, Sam jots down the bullet points, Googles “insider trading” then heads down the library to take out Investing for Dummies and find out how to open an account with a broker.

One lassoing of a best friend (Jade Anouka) with an unexpected inheritance and nothing except, uh, that to lose, one lodger who knows how to fix the knackered listening device Sam buys off eBay to put in the air vent above the insider trader’s office and they’re away. Hurrah!

By episode one’s end they’re £250 up, still have their hair and more importantly everyone has managed to keep a straight face. Perhaps Alice will even get into one of the top dance schools in the country, if that pesky boyfriend and resentment of her hardworking, good-hearted but debt-ridden mother’s compromises don’t scupper her chances of getting there! There are some things money can’t buy you love from or protect you from life not doing.

It needs slightly more story there’s too much Sam staring into mirrors while she cleans them; it takes Sam and Jess far too long in TV terms to do very little preparation for their sort of heist when it could have carried much greater weight of fun and not wholly plausible IRL detail because people love how tos; it could bear more weight altogether but this is generally solidly built nonsense that is such a rare joy that I feel obliged to stand here saluting it.

It’s all held together by the actors, who throw themselves at it without cynicism. This is always Smith’s greatest gift as a performer and she is surrounded here by a supporting cast doing likewise.

We leave Sam and Jess celebrating their ill gotten but morally justifiable (“They’re just a bunch of rich guys getting paid to move even richer guys’ money about! Why should these greedy bastards cut corners and get away with it?”) gains while, back in the office, the listening device’s wires start tapping on the side of the vent as the air blows through and the trader looks up in annoyance. Tune in next week for more things happening in a fun but unchallenging way! Stocks are up!

Watch The Clean Up For Free On Gomovies.