Stacey Dooley: The Young and Homeless, review - an illuminating film strengthened by Dooley's easy charm

Good documentaries often explore subjects about which viewers might have mixed feelings. Take Louis Theroux’s recent programme on polyamory, which with one hand invited viewers to think about the pleasures of having relationships with multiple partners, and with the other pointed to the obvious downsides.

Stacey Dooley, who is currently winning hearts and plenty of the judges' points in Strictly Come Dancing, does this too. Her latest notable examinations have included the environmental toll of cheap clothes (cheap clothes good… dried-up oceans bad) and the problems around giving paedophiles a second chance (sure, you believe in rehabilitative justice… but do you really?).

Stacey Dooley: The Young and Homeless (BBC One), a Children in Need special that followed four homeless teenagers, was more thematically straightforward. Does homelessness suck? Yes. Does teenage homelessness suck? Also yes. The teenagers all came across as likeable, and all had apparently been let down not only by the care system but also by their families. You would have to be fairly monstrous to have watched and not wanted them to end up with roofs over their heads.

So the documentary drew its power from elsewhere. It was illuminating, at least for those of us who’ve been lucky enough to avoid homelessness, to learn a little bit about the administrative loopholes through which young people tumble. Turning 18, for instance, suddenly hurls you down your local council’s list of priorities; taking part-time work that involves late shifts, as Josh, one of Dooley’s protagonists did, can lock you out of accommodation that closes its doors overnight.

Josh, who said he had been thrown out of the house by his mother, was ostensibly the star of the show. He selflessly gave up a bed in a shelter because he felt he, as a young man, would be less likely to be harassed on the streets overnight than the young woman who took his place. He seemed kind, resourceful and determined, and it was a happy moment, and a pleasing end to his storyline, when we saw him in a rented flat after he’d overcome various bureaucratic and financial hurdles.

But Dooley had done well to coax out his story, as well as those of the other teenagers. As usual, she was warm and empathetic, easily inveigling herself into the various groups of youngster she met. She touched them on the arm, complimented them, and treated their testimonies with respect. With this kind of easy charm, Dooley reaches parts of society that other documentary-makers would struggle to, and here, as elsewhere, her work was stronger for it.