The decline and fall of the upper middle classes

A television producer once had the misfortune of sitting next to me at a dinner party.  Rambling on bad claret, I wondered why TV dramatisations were confined to the grim depravity found in the declining north. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Why didn’t he adapt Simon Raven’s Alms for Oblivion series?’ Alms for Oblivion would make great television series, I argued. The action speeds across England with interludes in Germany, Venice, India and Egypt. Soldiers, politicians, publishers, writers and academics connive against one another for years, and every character is a fascinating, remorseless shyster.

I thought this a masterstroke and imagined myself the protégé of John Lloyd and John Howard Davies. I looked at my companion, expecting him to defer to the younger generation. Instead he said in an impatient tone, “Hmmm…nobody would watch it. Wrong class of people.”

I’m still surprised by that observation - not the wrong type, but the wrong class. Time was when the small screen was thick with Forsytes, Stockbridges, Flytes and Pallisers. Not all of it was good, but viewers haven’t been offered anything of the like since the Damian Lewis version of the Forsyte Saga and the insipid Monarch of the Glen before that.

You may think the moneyed toff has had his day; that his florid face (think James Hewitt) would be too gruesome in HD. You might be right, but consider the deluge of shows about rich Americans that have transferred to Britain. Privileged, 90210, Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money and The OC are much of a muchness. Each series follows the inane tribulations of implausibly young and implausibly rich people, with their slightly older and richer relatives and acquaintances hanging-on in poorly scripted sub-plots. No one works in these fantasies except chauffeurs. The protagonists glide through life air-kissing, sipping skinny lattes and jumping each other.

Based on TV exports, Americans will be surprised that there are Brits who haven’t fathered eight children with nine different women, and lost the power of speech whilst staggering to the jobcentre. Similarly, I was amazed that not all Americans are perverts who inherited fortunes. British audiences remain fascinated by the contrived rich American set, but have tired of the British equivalent unless it’s the Fast Show’s Ted and Ralph? Come off it.