Fair play to Ed Stafford for having the bottle to live rough on the streets, even for a few weeks, and show the rest of us what it is really like. And it turns out, it is not as brutal as he (or we) feared - there were arguments, but the first ep didn't have a single instance of anyone gratuitously abusing or attacking the homeless. Refreshingly (especially for C4) the programme didn't sanitise or idealise its subjects - it was clear that they all bore some responsibility for their situation - yet it still showed them as people deserving of sympathy (and help!). I don't think you could ask any more from a documentary of this type.
I have to say that it wasn't entirely fair to Manchester; the place was portrayed as being littered with drugged-out zombies and street latrines, and it certainly isn't. Still it can't be denied that there are a lot of people sleeping rough in the city centre.
