Simon Schama’s new show is, the BBC press blurb says, a “major” series, and it bears a grand and sweeping title, the Story of Us. One always wonders to whom such weighty first-person plurals refer – the answer here is the British people, in terms of how our postwar arts and culture have shaped who we are. But the picture of us is subjective, somewhat vague and limited to just three episodes. Major series are not what they used to be.
The timeline begins with the first cultural event Schama himself can remember, the 1951 Festival of Britain. It presented the country as forward-looking and dynamic, but the techno wonderland it set up on London’s South Bank was a temporary installation that the incoming Conservative government were happy to demolish – and, behind the dream of a bright manufacturing future, workers were on the rough end of Britain’s class divide.
