Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Is This The Most Middle Class Programme On Television?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    #51
    Can I just shock you? I like Grand Designs.

    Which is to say, after slagging it off above, I've been watching a load of them with my wife (all 180 odd of them are available on 4od) and I've come round completely.

    For the purposes of this thread, it's still of course just as middle class as ever, but I can appreciate more now just on the basis of how beautifully made it is. Firstly, the filming is beautiful. But on a level of TV ethics, it sticks with projects for years to see how they develop; there's none of the bullshit papering over the cracks of time you get with cheaply made or bargain hunting or poverty porn television. These days with TV it's really unusual to see how things develop over time – Grand Designs does this. Also, much TV from Come Dine With Me to The Apprentice manufactures conflict and set-pieces, and I don't think Grand Designs does that at all. The conversations are proper conversations. If there are personal conflicts, they explore them in another way. Kevin McCloud does actually get properly involved, quite literally mucking in on occasion. I think this kind of longterm engagement is increasingly rare in television, often with toxic consequences where people and places are fetishised, cheapened or misrepresented.

    Obviously there's a central middle classness about the show in that it gives no sense how extraordinarily exceptional it is to be in a position to build your own house, or to take a year off from work, but it at least mentions debt, or environmental issues, etc, and treats the viewer as an adult to make up their own mind about it.

    So yeah. Grand Designs.

    Comment


      #52
      I'd have placed Grand Designs as 'middle class aspirational' rather than 'middle class' per se.

      Originally posted by Benjm View Post
      Scares 'n' suspense title Misty is the girls' comic with retro cred. 2000AD have taken to bringing out Hallowe'en special editions.

      I have never met a person called Misty. More than one cat though and Jane Weaver used to have a band called Misty Dixon.
      Southall's finest, Misty In Roots, sometimes used to shorten their name (or have it shortened) thus, as well.

      Comment


        #53
        Grand Designs is certainly some kind of middle class thing, but 99% at least of middle class people couldn't even see themselves in the same position.

        I don't aspire to build my own house or anything like, but there's lots of other things I can appreciate - the geography, science, craft of all this stuff.

        Comment


          #54
          Not a regular GD viewer but I find that the bits when Kevin McCloud waxes lyrical about the owners and the project are one of the weak parts of the programme. The feeling of here-he-goes-again may be inevitable on such a long running show where he has to make the same three or four points pretty much every week. The degree to which the people have to put their backs into their projects and the risks involved do mitigate the sense of oblivious entitlement that makes most property shows unwatchable.

          There is a risk with this thread that 'middle class' just becomes a catch all pejorative term for stuff we don't like that is a bit old to be called 'hipster'. The most middle class thing on television could just as easily be whatever I happen to be watching at any given time.

          Comment


            #55
            Yes, I think after 180 shows, he's running out of material a bit for those, considering he writes the show also. But, I like the fact that he does most of the stuff on his own show, that's rare.

            Comment


              #56
              Fair play to him; I'd rather he stick with the winning formula than diversify into something like that Marie Antoinette shit that Kirstie Allsopp does.


              Come to think of it, he did that extreme move to the country thing, where the participants moved to reindeer herders' huts or coral atolls rather than, say, Winchester. That was quite enjoyable too, mainly because of the all-in, Colonel Kurtz aspect of it.

              Comment


                #57
                I watch Grand Designs a lot. But only to laugh at the spiralling costs and the breakup of the relationship due to stress.

                Comment


                  #58
                  You can introduce a betting, play-as-you-watch aspect to your watching along those lines, of course.

                  I think I refuse Escape To The Chateau purely on the basis of its title. I don't even know exactly what it's about but I refuse to find out.

                  Comment


                    #59
                    Originally posted by EIM View Post
                    I watch Grand Designs a lot. But only to laugh at the spiralling costs and the breakup of the relationship due to stress.
                    Haven't you got MUTV for that?

                    Comment


                      #60
                      Originally posted by EIM View Post
                      I watch Grand Designs a lot. But only to laugh at the spiralling costs and the breakup of the relationship due to stress.
                      Does that happen? Maybe I'll start watching it.

                      Comment


                        #61
                        I like Grand Designs. I don't particularly want to see them fail because they are clearly working their nuts off to achieve a dream. Occasionally the end results are absolutely brilliant and the Mrs has already said that in the vanishingly small chance that the opportunity should arise, we can have a Huf Haus.

                        Comment


                          #62
                          The Good Life, as was pointed out in The Young Ones, was the most typically middle-class sitcom of the 70s. Tory v SDP.

                          Comment


                            #63
                            Originally posted by Jah Womble View Post
                            Does that happen? Maybe I'll start watching it.
                            It certainly has in More4's other shows, like Building the Dream. There was one in which a couple started the build together, with the bloke being really negative. When the presenter popped back a couple of months later, he'd scarpered off and the girlfriend just shrugged, got on with it, albeit with a smaller build and budget, and did a really smart build. There was another where they self-built a house with a tiny budget and used haybales for the build. Because of the fact they rarely used trades, it took an enternity to do (iirc they lived in a tent/shed for 2 years whilst the build crept forward) and when the programme popped back a couple of years later when it was finally finished, she'd (understandably) had enough and left the bloke to finish it on his own.

                            Comment


                              #64
                              To go back to the original post, I liked the Repair Shop, but would have liked it a lot more if they'd had less of the customers tearfully taking back their possessions, and more of the craftspeople just repairing the stuff. That part of it was fascinating, but I suppose they have to crowbar human interest into everything now. I'm not interested in humans. I want to see someone mending a steam engine or gluing a pot together. Why can't they just show that?

                              All this Jack Hargreaves talk is making me want to go and find Out Of Town on YouTube, in case that might scratch the itch.
                              Last edited by Alderman Barnes; 05-10-2018, 20:12.

                              Comment


                                #65
                                Can I add a late claim for The Wine Show?

                                Comment


                                  #66
                                  What fresh hell is this.

                                  Comment


                                    #67
                                    Sits has won the thread.

                                    I have seen bits and pieces of that wine programme and it is skull crushingly awful. The posh bro banter is off the scale for cringeworthiness (and I quite like Hawaii 5-0).

                                    Comment


                                      #68
                                      And you lot liked "The Americans".

                                      (grumbles... I knew he was a cunt from "Brothers and Sisters"... grumble)

                                      Comment


                                        #69
                                        Originally posted by Alderman Barnes View Post
                                        I'm not interested in humans. I want to see someone mending a steam engine or gluing a pot together. Why can't they just show that?
                                        There's a lot of that on youtube.

                                        Comment


                                          #70
                                          Is this a good place to mention, again, that "middle class" means something different in the UK than it does in the US?

                                          Comment


                                            #71
                                            Well, middle class in the US seems to have become so broad as to be basically meaningless. It seems to anybody who has under $10m in assets who also doesn't literally live in a cardboard box under a highway bridge.

                                            Comment


                                              #72
                                              It has been that way (adjusted for inflation) in political discourse for my entire life.

                                              Comment


                                                #73
                                                Things I love about Grand Designs

                                                Kevin's successful supression of his obvious urge to shout, "Get a professional to do it, you bloody fools" when someone says they will be the project manager.
                                                "And then, the UK is struck by the worst <insert weather phenomenon here> in <insert time period here>"
                                                People lying through their teeth about the budget.
                                                The people who are genuinely mad, but in a good way that means they build a thing of beauty, often with their own hands.
                                                Kevin is a fertility god.
                                                The people part ways with the builders.
                                                "It's a brave project, and for that, they should be applauded." = Kevin hates it.

                                                Comment


                                                  #74
                                                  Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                                  Well, middle class in the US seems to have become so broad as to be basically meaningless. It seems to anybody who has under $10m in assets who also doesn't literally live in a cardboard box under a highway bridge.
                                                  That's true among politicians, especially.*

                                                  I suppose the difference is that in the US, we think of class as how much money one has, in which case the delineation of lower, middle, and upper are completely arbitrary. I'm inclined to want to just cut it into even thirds or, perhaps, 25%-50%-25%, but I'm not in charge.

                                                  In the UK, it's about where you are in the economic order of things, I think, so upper means you own the means of production, middle means you're a manager - either money or people - working for the upper class, and working class means everyone else. I suppose that's more precise and more useful, but a lot of people in the manager class own quite a lot and serve a lot of the same functions as the traditional landowner class. And, thanks to unions etc, a large number (though shrinking) of working-class people have a lot of assets - or think they do - and therefore vote like the ownership class. I'm not sure where highly-paid skilled people - Premier League footballers, successful artists, highly-paid engineers, etc. - fit into that. But most of them probably end-up as managers or some kind eventually and there aren't really all that many such people anyway, I guess.

                                                  The terms are muddied further when we ascribe them to people based on their tastes - or sets of tastes, which appears to be what this thread is really about. But in general, it feels like what UK people think of as "middle class" is what we'd be more likely to call "rich" or "privileged" or even "posh." We might call it "upper class" but then, as I say, we don't use that term much.

                                                  *Indeed, we seem to talk way more about the "middle class" then any of the other classes or even acknowledge the existence of any other classes. I can't recall a politician - other than maybe Bernie Sanders - ever using the term "working class" or "upper class" or "ownership class." I guess the Republicans know that anyone who is in the working and/or lower class and actually knows it would never vote for them anyway, while the Democrats don't want potential donors to be too afraid that they might acturally try to change the power-balance in society. So everyone is just lumped in together as a "hard-working American family."


                                                  **Of course, a lot of people who have more than enough to live fairly comfortable without working anymore don't think that they do because they think they need to stay in the style to which they're accustomed. Many of the people on shows like this appear to have enough that they could just chuck the job and live with one reasonably priced house/flat and one reasonably priced car, but they don't. They keep working more and more to obtain more shit.

                                                  I'm perpetually amazed that there aren't more wealthy people who've retired young. If I could figure out a legal and non-morally-reprehensible way to do that, I would. Fuck this shit. I just can't imagine being in my fifties and making seven digits a year and willingly signing on for a few more years. Yeah, you get multiple big houses and boats and shit, but your TIME, man, your TIME. We only get to do this once. When you're on your death bed, are you going to think, "I wish I'd spent more time in the office so I could buy a Porsche?" I suppose the sad reality is that there are a lot of people who do think that. Fuck.

                                                  Comment


                                                    #75
                                                    I’m throwing BBC1’s Fake or Fortune? in the ring as I believe it has a very strong claim to that title and blow your Grand Designs and your Blue Peters and your Repair Shops out of the water. I’m an art enthusiast and love that programme but it is extremely middle class, in an old-fashioned way (defo in upper middle class territory most of the time). These are my exhibits:

                                                    #1. uber-posh presenters and experts with cut-glass public school accents you could hang your silk hat on and who speak foreign languages with no discernible embarrassment

                                                    #2. international art dealers and private galleries located in the most exclusive boroughs of the world’s most affluent cities with the odd street shot of a Farrow & Ball showroom or a Cartier boutique

                                                    #3. most locations shown (other than #2 above) are in very affluent or middle class areas, such as stockbroker belt-towns in the South East. Hardly any shots of the real world; the most proletarian location I remember was probably Western Brittany (the Pont-Aven artists' colony, in relation to the Fake or Fortune? episode featuring Gauguin) and a field in the South West of France (episode featuring Toulouse-Lautrec, museum in Albi) showing glimpses of fruit-picking workers, possibly immigrants and quite possibly illegals even or working without a proper CGT-approved employment contract

                                                    #4. little muffled yelps of excitement when an old ledger is produced from a dusty cabinet, sometimes followed by an oblique dig at modernity, eg here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRbj...outu.be&t=1791

                                                    #5. £million sums routinely mentioned and phrases/sentences such as “he was a dapper chap who loved fine dining”, “leading auction house” or “their main butler was educated at Eton“ casually bandied about

                                                    #6. plenty of lawyers and Latin phrases heard (people suing each other and litigation cases to ascertain whether an œuvre is authentic or not)

                                                    #7. plenty of old money European or US families and aristocracy/high society members involved in one way or another, or whose names regularly crop up

                                                    #8. impeccable table manners and sipping etiquette when in cafés/restaurants/tea rooms; evidence of superior tableware used betokening upmarket setting

                                                    #9. classical music almost exclusively used for soundtrack, except when in art labs where modern equipment is used (music becomes more dynamic), eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yfh...outu.be&t=2930

                                                    #10. people shown travelling first class on trains

                                                    #11. occasional shots of immaculate walled gardens, sometimes showing an elegant garden office studio or a Deluxe summerhouse pod

                                                    #12. people wearing classy jewellery

                                                    #13. lots of non-museum scenes shot in classic grand buildings eg academies, chateaux, operas etc. (eg the Fake or Fortune? on a Degas painting, cue footage of ballets and the Palais Garnier in Paris – the old opera)

                                                    #14. recap meetings in dark archive libraries with curators wearing white gloves

                                                    #15. just about everybody in the programme being slim

                                                    #16. immaculately tidy workshops and art studios

                                                    #17. routine conversations peppered with references to “Le Bleu Majorelle”, the “chiaroscuro technique” etc. (I realise this one is contentious as Fake or Fortune? is bound to contain art terms but there is a deliberate overuse of foreign terms instead of their English equivalents/periphrases IMO)


                                                    Comment

                                                    Working...
                                                    X