Cleaning Up review: Sheridan Smith’s character highlights the very real problem of gambling addiction

The inspiration for Cleaning Up (ITV), a gritty new British drama, came from a sleek old American movie.

Writer Mark Marlow was watching Oliver Stone’s 1987 classic Wall Street when he was snagged by the scene in which Charlie Sheen’s character has been given the task of finding some inside information for Gordon Gekko. Seeing the ambitious young stockbroker rifling through the filing cabinets, Marlow noticed the cleaners in the background and thought: “If they work in that office, surrounded by inside information, why couldn’t they just do that?”

Cue Sheridan Smith with a Hoover and cunning plan. Thanks to an unsettled intensity that has never lurked far beneath her apple-cheeked charm, Smith has effortlessly made the difficult transition from the sitcoms in which she made her name (The Royle Family, Gavin & Stacey) to harder-hitting dramas such as The C Word.

Here she plays Sam, a single, working-class mum, struggling to juggle the school run with dragging that Hoover through dark dawns in the City. She’s like the mouse shown scuttling across the gleaming platform of Canary Wharf station in the opening credits: beady-eyed, vulnerable and far beyond the notice of the arrogant men in suits.

What she has in common with those men is a gambling addiction. Their testosterone-fuelled barking on the trading floor is shown as a grander version of her sweaty-palmed obsession with online roulette at a spangly pink website called “Ladies Night Casino”. She reaches this soulless game at work, in the car, with the kids. We watch in horror as she repeatedly jabs the “Spin Again” option on her smartphone, losing thousands in the first episode alone.

These scenes are so desperately mundane that I was compelled to find out how familiar they might be to British viewers. It turns out an estimated 300,000 people in the UK have a gambling disorder, with another 540,000 at moderate risk. On average, two people kill themselves every day because of gambling problems.

I phoned Liz Karter, a Harley Street therapist specialising in women addicted to gambling, who said the numbers of women struggling like Sam are “definitely on the rise. Ninety-eight per cent of the women I see gamble online. There’s no need to go into a betting shop or casino now, so there’s no stigma. It’s not about money. It’s not even about winning. It’s about blocking out stress, anxiety, depression.

“I’ve seen women driven to prostitution, to smashing their kids’ piggy banks to pay for the habit. I’ve also seen a rise in bankers and traders addicted to online gambling. They do it all day for work and then come home and carry on. The psychology is the same.”

Back on telly, there is an excruciatingly clunky expository scene in which Sam overhears a surly trader (played by Zadie Smith’s rapper brother Ben Bailey Smith) do a dodgy deal: “So you’re blackmailing me? If I get caught it’s seven years minimum ... OK, fine, just give me the company name.”

The writing may be leaden but the opportunity is golden and Sam is on it like a shot. She biros the company name on her hand, buys a copy of Investing in Shares for Dummies and ropes in her more level-headed friend Jess (the brilliant, steely-eyed Jade Anouka).

You can’t help rooting for them in the absurd scene where Sam balances on a desk to plants a microphone in the ceiling of the insider dealer’s office and cheering as their £50 investment blooms into £500. Unlike in Wall Street – where Charlie Sheen’s dad gives a moral face to the decent folk hurt by Gordon Gekko’s greed – theirs appears a small, victimless, Robin Hood kind of crime.

And with radio clips of the remote and haughty Theresa May preaching that “work is the best route out of poverty” playing as the debt collector’s texts ping into Sam’s phone, viewers will sympathise with her drive to keep playing money markets that have always been rigged against the little people like her.

But there are five more episodes to go. Will Mark Marlow follow Oliver Stone’s high moral tone and make his cleaner come clean? Or let his damaged, downtrodden mouse get away with some cheese? A little cheese is good, right?