Stephen Graham says working class families are made to look ‘miserable’ on TV

29 comments

1. He’s not wrong.

   The depiction of working classes in the media has always been terrible. It’s either poverty porn or a way for the upper/middle class to sneer/laugh at the working classes.

2. “EastEnders — the only miserable cockneys in captivity”. Nancy Banks-Smith.

3. The upper middle classes who work in the media can’t imagine them not being miserable. They just picture sad dumb helpless individuals who should be begging their superiors for their help.

4. It’s why I hate EastEnders, it’s just poverty porn

5. Does any media depiction of any class revolve around the sunshine and roses of life? And if the media DID portray persistently happy working class people, wouldn’t they be accused of whitewashing?

6. I’ve often thought this. Certainly working class men are almost always wife beaters or criminals or alcoholics at the end of their rope. There’s rarely any positive qualities and certainty not intelligence written into the characters.

7. lol it’s true . Me and my wife are both nurses and we both are in senior positions .our household income is around £120k . But when we tell someone we are nurses they look at us like they caught us coming out of the local food bank 😂

8. This is why the Royle Family remains one of the greatest sitcoms ever written.

9. The Royle family was such a great representation of a working class family.

   Despite Jim being a cantankerous old bastard I still think the family was portrayed as being pretty happy even Jim was happy. They weren’t demonised. It wasn’t “poverty porn”.

   It was just a normal family sat in their front room having a laugh.

   I don’t think there’s been another TV series that really captured that essence so well.

10. If Jeremy Kyle was still on air, you’d see a lot more traditionally middle class families on there.

11. He’s got a point. I think soaps play up to the stereotype and it’s quite sickening.

12. It’s propaganda. They portray the working class as uneducated, crime adjacent, and selfish.

    That way, the middle class doesn’t have to feel bad when they ignore working class issues because “they do it to themselves.”

13. It’s by design.
    It’s meant to make people in that class bracket see people on TV struggling and being miserable and think their own struggles “aren’t so bad’ by comparison.

    Keeps em happy and subdued don’t it.

14. Working class families know how to have a laugh – it’s the improverished former middle class white collars that are miserable and for good reason lol

15. He’s correct, just look at tv shows from skins to shameless to Misfits.

16. Why would you want to watch a normal family on TV?

    Lower classes get the dole scum treatment, middle classes get the hoity toity Hyacinth Bucket treatment, and Upper Classes get the Hooray Henry batshit inbred treatment.

17. He not wrong. If the middle class feel squeezed. How do you think the working class feel ?!

18. We are always portrayed as having a chip on our shoulder. Frustrates me.

19. “Working class” on TV was always decidedly middle-class teens from well-off drama schools putting on “rough” accents and pretending to be scum. Shit like Inbetweeners and Skins was always fucking hilariously out of touch to anyone who ever actually lived on a council estate.

    But this is a problem of yesteryear. We’re into 2025 now where “working class” doesn’t even exist any more: there’s the bottom rung on benefits, then varying degrees of middle classes who like to *think* they’re working class, but really aren’t — from the Telegraph Barbour-jacket wearing types who think their parents’ “hard graft” means they’re not well off, to the Guardian opinion piece types, who are “poor” in the sense that they have student loans and overdrafts, but still have parental financial support.

    What even is “working class” these days? The gap’s widened enormously at this point.

20. Yeah it’s much worse for the working class, so he’s not wrong

21. And when upper middle class are made to look ‘relatable’ and it’s unrealistic and cringy

22. This post and the comments are so hilarious honestly. Every other post on this sub is doomed porn about how fucked the working class are, but suddenly it’s a problem for that to be portrayed on tv. However if happy working class people were portrayed, you’d have the same people complaining it doesn’t reflect reality. Reddit moment.

23. I dunno I thought Derry girls was a good positive depiction of working class families

24. It’s a bit pot calling the kettle black on Reddit with the amount of sneering at working class people that goes on here

25. When my insanely talented filmmaking friend from Yorkshire (and earnestly, he’s worked with high paying clients and roles in the states and here) would apply for funding for northern creatives at the BFI, he was always told one thing;
    ‘Sorry, we’re looking for real, kitchen sink drama.’

    Each pitch or call would always be dominated by someone saying they wanted to do some variation on depressed families living in perpetual gray scale in a dimly lit kitchen. It’s beyond patronising.

26. It’s so wrong too. My family are a lot happier than a lot of the more middle class families who I interact with. We can sit in the same room for more than 5 minutes for one thing and can at have a laugh with each other. The further you move up the ladder the less I see that happening.

27. And if they have kids they are always struggling with them. It’s never just a happy family.

28. It’s true we are… wish I was happy and rich or happy and having loads of free time to do what ever the fuck I want on benefits

29. He has a point but then at the same time if there was a show with a happy family in poverty then people would have a fit, it’s a bit damned if you do damned if you don’t isn’t it?

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