Ooh, I've never seen the books. Might have a look at them. I just love that there are so many funny one liners, but delivered quite understatedly, rather than ba-doom-tish.
" Danny said he's going to get an earring like David Essex"
"Did he? His Mother'll help him pack"
I also love how it portrays council estates as how they were intended to be, and how a lot of them really were in the 1970s; places where ordinary working families lived, some with a bit of dosh, enough for a holiday in Spain and a car, some with less, but just normal.
The same estate in Bermondsey now would, be such a weird combination of 400 k flats owned by "professionals" and people who had been housed in the few remaining council owned flats because of a set of desperate life circumstances. It wouldn't gel in the same way at all.