The cost of living crisis is going to get much worse, but what’s the biggest thing on TV? The Crown, Netflix’s bejewelled royal soap opera. Oh, the tyranny of inherited wealth and privilege. A report earlier this year suggested a further 1.3 million people will fall into poverty this winter, but a disgraced ex-cabinet minister is currently getting paid £400k to eat bugs on ITV. Bills are getting higher, and the guests at The White Lotus are ordering more caviar. Television has never felt so out of step with our times. Reality is biting hard, but, right now, you’ll rarely see that on your screen.
The news this week that Douglas Stuart is adapting his Booker Prize-winning debut novel Shuggie Bain into a drama for the BBC should signal a change. The viscerally written story of a young boy growing up in Glasgow with an alcoholic mother is based on Stuart’s own life story. The 46-year-old author grew up on the grey, concrete Sighthill estate, full of highrises and crumbling tenements; his mother – who, like the character in the book, was called Agnes – died when he was 16. In the novel, she wears a fur coat like armour in the face of life’s disappointments, her glamour incongruous with the fact that her life is ruled by plastic bags filled with lager cans.
