Looking After Jo Jo

rdf:langString Looking After Jo Jo

rdf:langString Drama

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rdf:langString Thriller

rdf:langString English

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rdf:langString Ewan Stewart

rdf:langString Kevin McKidd as Basil

rdf:langString Robert Carlyle as Jo Jo McCann

rdf:langString Looking After Jo Jo is a 1998 BBC Scotland television drama starring Robert Carlyle. John Joseph (Jo Jo) McCann (Carlyle) has been a habitual criminal since childhood, when he pilfered cash boxes for his dad. He's been in and out of prison ever since. He lives in a high rise council flat with his mother and sister. Looking After JoJo traces the career of a petty thief turned drug dealer in 1980's Edinburgh. The title character is a pleasant if misguided young man surviving in a bleak housing estate and aspiring to the trappings of a successful criminal. Unfortunately for him, and for most of the other characters in the mini-series, it is a time of heroin addiction and AIDS. We watch JoJo become ensnared in the drugs scene and his deterioration is both painful to watch and very moving. Robert Carlyle's performance is extraordinarily complex and textured. He is ably supported by Jenny McCrindle, Ewan Stewart and Trainspotting's Kevin McKidd. This isn't the fast-moving MTV drug scene of Trainspotting but a more character-oriented, leisurely look at the human cost of drug addiction. It is filmed and set in and around the North Sighthill housing estate, with several scenes also filmed in Niddrie.