TV Pick of the Week: New BBC3 reality series ‘Life Is Toff’

I had a theory, a few years ago, that the recession changed British TV in quite a radical way, that it changed the way we think of class, wealth and, importantly, ideas of success, ownership and ambition.

There was a tipping point during The Apprentice around 2008. Once a programme about ambitious young go-getters quitting their retail job and nurturing their previously neglected business skills, the show turned into a hysterical gameshow where irritable planks in nylon suits cartwheeled around town flogging absolute tatt in order to win… something. A job. No, a business deal! A product patent?

After the recession soured peoples perceptions of bankers, businessmen and the sort of finance guys who can flog you a pen when you really want a Kindle, The Apprentice focused less on savviness and veered towards tomfoolery.

The entertainment, it turned out, was watching these wankers fail at trying to succeed, because look at them! Hairstyles sculpted at business schools. The kind of empathy you expect in a faulty robot. What’s changed is that we now like to see these sort of people punished for pursuing wealth in the first place.

Anyway, I was thinking about this when I heard about BBC3’s new show Life Is Toff, which, you can probably guess, is the TV equivalent of holding a tiny, invisible violin to your chin and making an insufferable wailing noise in lieu of actually caring.

The six-part series follows the Fulfords, a notoriously wealthy family who live in rural Devon. The Fulfords, with their accumulated wealth, vast estates and a rich 800-year family history bearing down on them like a weighty tome, might draw obvious parallels to House Lannister from Game of Thrones, but if you think like that, it’s almost too easy to dismiss them as a bunch of posh henries who drink wine that costs more than your rent.

This show wants to do more than have us gawp at people who live different lives. Instead, Life Is Toff aims to tell stories from the four young adults in the family, all coming of age, all burdened with the same kind of problems that plague “normal people” and aiming to have you treat the absurdly rich with a bit of sympathy.

It’s quite a smart idea, and BBC3, as the proprietor of “youth programming” is the right place for this kind of show, because they should be telling stories about young people whether they work in a coffee shop, rely on benefits, or spend their time rubbing two big coins together in an attempt to conjure up a third.

And you know, the more you think about it, the responsibility of generations of wealth and history is quite a weighty burden. Not “avenge my dead parents” weighty, like Batman, but it’s still quite interesting.

The problem is, and it comes back to the idea of wealth, responsibility and success is: if you totally fuck up, who cares? What’s actually at stake here?

Take X Factor contestants, and their rags-to-riches story. When you have someone like bream-smeller-turned-dream-seller Lola Saunders, you want to root for her because according to the laws of television the idea of her returning to her mundane job is awful, and must be prevented, despite the fact she applied for the job in the first place and, barring any archaic, medieval employment laws, probably enjoys working there.

If this show is a total flop, the Fulfords will go on with their life and invest some of their money in something else. And that makes a show like this hard to buy into when there’s no sense of urgency, where nothing’s at stake, and if you’re like me, have to dip into your pension pot in order to pay for a haircut.

So it might not shake you to your emotional core, but beneath the pungent veil of sour wine and old money, Life Is Toff still has the potential to be quite an interesting look at how, despite the ‘how the other half lives’ tropes, rich young people are still lumbered with crippling insecurities and problems. And in a way, that’s sort of comforting.

Life Is Toff begins tonight (October 28) at 10pm on BBC3.