Melvyn Bragg fronts this brisk, three-hour chronicle of how class shaped the nation’s arts from the eve of the Great War to the 2011 London riots. Across three episodes broadcast on consecutive Fridays in February and March 2012, he moves from music-hall stars like Marie Lloyd to the rise of David Bowie, tracking how working-class voices gained traction only to be re-branded as ‘heritage’ by the millennium. Each hour is self-contained, with the first ending on the birth of the BBC in 1922, the second closing with the advent of commercial television in 1955, and the third arriving at social-media fuelled protest culture.
Bragg’s camera visits terraced streets in Salford, the Paris Theatre off Lower Regent Street, and the now-demolished set of Coronation Street, stitching together archive clips of George Formby, John Osborne and The Clash with new interviews featuring Ken Loach, Joan Bakewell and Jarvis Cocker. No talking-head outweighs another, and Bragg’s habit of quoting lyrics or play extracts on location supplies the commentary with a scrap-book immediacy that belies the series’ lecture-style title.
The BBC commissioned the series to mark its 90th anniversary, and the corporation’s own shifting class credentials provide the programme’s running gag: once patronising northern voices, it now sells them back as boxed-set nostalgia. Class and Culture never pretends to solve the riddle of British inequality, but it leaves the viewer with a precise timeline of how working-class stories slipped from novelty to commodity within a century.
Production Details
BBC Two / 1 Season / 3 Episodes / 2012
Main Cast
