It’s a cliché that British people recoil with awkwardness at the idea of publicly discussing money. Property shows have allowed us to privately indulge the British obsession with house price from our sofas, with money primarily existing on television as a financial prize. When the financial crisis hit in 2008 and the economy began dominating the headlines, UK TV was forced to engage in the most un-British of conversations: how would it reflect the biggest financial crisis since the great depression?
It began with big, chewy dramatisations. The Last Days of Lehman Brothers premiered on BBC Two in September 2009, a year after the crisis started. Packed with apocalyptic imagery, it offered a dramatic account of the weekend the financial crash began. Instead of following the widely propagated narrative that the crisis was a collective failure that we all bore responsibility for, the crash was depicted as an avoidable mess created by elites.
The same channel’s Dominic Savage drama Freefall premiered the same year. Set in 2007, when the finance industry was jauntily driving the global economy towards a cliff edge, the drama entangles the stories of those impacted by the crisis. Dominic Cooper played the Patrick Bateman-esque broker, while Aiden Gillen was an even greedier banker whose life unravelled after being caught out in the sub-prime mortgage market.
American TV was more noticeably affected by the financial crisis. Dramas such as Gossip Girl, which celebrated the eye-watering wealth of Manhattan’s elite, became instantly out of place in such volatile economic times. Dramas quickly introduced storylines to reflect the wider economy. In Desperate Housewives, a family pizzeria folded and Susan Meyer was forced to move from Wisteria Lane and downsize. Brothers and Sisters also depicted the collapse of a traditional family business. Fast-paced drama Billions highlighted the corruption of US systems that allow the uber-rich to maintain their status. The Affair and Big Little Lies portray wealthy people as tortured and lonely, depicting a darker, complex side of money.
Reality stars from the wealth-worshipping Real Housewives franchise, which premiered shortly before the crisis, were also affected. Cast members were served eviction notices on camera and others declared bankruptcy. On making the crisis a storyline, executive producer Andy Cohen said: “Viewers actually related even more seeing what was really going on”.
The seeds of the financial crash were sown in the boardrooms and skyscrapers, and while the film world would circle back to criticise them in films such as The Big Short, Too Big to Fail and Inside Job, British TV quickly moved on to a different target: the undeserving poor. Aside from analysing what caused the crash, dramas exploring its widespread effects – the trickle-down misery of redundancies, evictions and business closures – are less common. Instead, nuanced and sensitive film-making was replaced by ratings-driven programming with the ability to shock, enrage and distract.
Channel 4’s Benefits Street is an example of credit-crunch commissioning that furthered a mood of resentment, while shrewdly advancing political narratives surrounding economy. The 2014, docu-series followed residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham, where 90% of residents claim benefits. Many showed little motivation to seek employment and some engaged in criminal behaviour. Benefits Street enraged many on the left, who branded it exploitative “poverty porn”. With the Conservative party pursuing an austerity programme of cuts to public spending while the right-wing press hammered the message that Brits should “live within their means” and be “strivers not skivers”, the programme’s cast were perfect targets for vilification.
Benefits Street proved that characterising poor people as scroungers could generate big ratings. Channel 5 capitalised on this by commissioning a slew of incendiary programmes, including The Great Big Benefits Wedding: LIVE!, 12 Years Old and On Benefits, Benefits and Bypasses: Billion Pound Patients, Undercover Benefits Cheat, Benefits Brits By the Sea and On Benefits and Proud. The cherry on top of this odious cake was The Big Benefits Row, a debate between Benefits Street star “White Dee” and former The Apprentice contestant Katie Hopkins.
With a three-fold ratings increase during the 2008 downturn, The Apprentice symbolised a “British Dream” narrative, offering people of all backgrounds an equal shot at victory. Self-made mogul Lord Sugar would often bark things like: “I don’t care what you do, clean cars, clean windows, whatever. Just get out there and make me some money”. The fetishisation of “rags to riches” stories such as that of Michelle Dewberry, who went from living on a council estate to winning season two of the show.
In the aftermath of the economic crisis, reality TV figures like Sugar were repeatedly portrayed as saviours, plucking deserving individuals from obscurity. Dragon’s Den, and to a greater extent Channel 4’s The Secret Millionaire, which follows self-made millionaires as they visit disadvantaged communities pretending to be “normal” people, exemplify this narrative.
Old money was also salivated over too. Viewers found comfort in Downton Abbey (the show was consistently in the top 10 most-watched programmes of the year) and the unconcealed privilege of a world gone by. Cast members of E4’s structured reality show Made In Chelsea – who cheerfully admitted to living off their parents - were rewarded with celebrity status and media careers.
Although the US elected a reality star as its president - and one who once said he was “excited” about the housing market crash – US television embodies a more explicit, confident representation of money and the economic crisis. But a decade after the financial crisis began, dramatic representations of the recession are still a rarity on UK screens. Instead, a new breed of reality television helped to scapegoat the poor, while celebrating wealth and those who wield it. Ten years on, UK television’s moral crisis continues. The question has to be asked: have we learned anything at all?
