Make Bradford British (Channel 4, March 2012) put a dozen locals of mixed ethnic and religious backgrounds into shared housing to test whether daily proximity chips away at the city’s reputation for segregation. Hidden cameras followed the volunteers as they cooked, prayed, argued and went to work, producing frank footage that the producers then edited into two 60-minute episodes.
Bradford City Council leader Ian Greenwood publicly objected that the series recycled the stereotype of a city split along racial lines, pointing out that the programme-makers recruited specifically along those lines before declaring integration a problem. Channel 4 replied that the experiment was never intended as a sociological study; it was observational television designed to provoke national conversation.
Viewing figures were modest, yet the show’s title became shorthand in Westminster policy briefings whenever northern integration was debated. A follow-up, Make Leicester British, aired in November 2014, repeating the format in another Midlands city with a comparable demographic mix.
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