What TV shows are dominating the conversation, capturing the zeitgeist, have something interesting to say, or are hidden gems waiting to be uncovered or rediscovered? This week, in keeping with the theme of the Star’s Culture section, we’re talking about shows that reflect class. And, be warned, there are spoilers ahead.
The first time I remember consciously thinking about class as it related to a television show was when I saw “All in the Family,” which debuted in January 1971, when I was nine.
Its main character, Archie Bunker, was a dock worker living with his wife, daughter and, eventually, son-in-law in Queens, N.Y., but — despite the fact his family, like mine, lived in a house and my father did a job some might consider blue collar — I clocked the Bunkers as being in a lower strata than my own based on the way Archie (Carroll O’Connor) spoke.
Archie, a white, Protestant, Nixon-loving reactionary, used words for other ethnic and racial groups not permissible on TV today (or really, anywhere) and perpetually put down his “dingbat” wife, Edith (Jean Stapleton), and his “meathead” son-in-law, Mike (Rob Reiner).
Although people with more power and money pulled the strings outside the house, Archie was king in his shabby living room, his throne a worn wingback chair (now in the collection of the Smithsonian). He even became a business owner, buying a neighbourhood bar in Season 8.
But his success was outstripped by the Black family who moved two houses down — despite Archie’s and his white neighbours’ attempts to keep them out — “The Jeffersons” (1975).
George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley), a cantankerous Black foil to Archie, parlayed his dry-cleaning business into a swanky apartment on New York’s Upper East Side in the “All in the Family” spinoff. The Jeffersons had “moved on up,” as the famous theme song said, from Harlem to Queens and then to Manhattan where George was eager to adopt signifiers of wealth like a maid, despite the discomfort of his wife, Louise (Isabel Sanford), a former maid herself.
There’s an irony to the fact that, despite “The Jeffersons” being a rare TV portrayal at the time of an upper middle class Black family succeeding despite white racism, CBS didn’t bother to alert the cast beforehand when the show was cancelled after 11 seasons, two longer than “All in the Family” lasted. They reportedly learned about it from newspaper reports; there was no opportunity for a series finale.
In 2011, a TV family hit screens in which any thought of upward mobility seemed a pipe dream: the Gallaghers of “Shameless.”
Single father Frank (William H. Macy) spent most of his disability cheques on booze or drugs while the oldest of his six children kept the family afloat, either through legitimate jobs or theft. The family home on the South Side of Chicago was chaotic — if Frank wasn’t missing, he was likely passed out on the floor somewhere — but relatively comfortable despite the family’s poverty.
When the show ended, the kids were fatherless, at least two of them were facing a life of continued poverty, possibly even homelessness, and one a life of crime. For instance, son Lip (Jeremy Allen White, who went on to “The Bear”) was smart enough to be accepted into MIT, but had a girlfriend and son he was struggling to support, another child maybe on the way and a younger brother to care for.
But Frank, in his unsentimental last words to his family, figured they’d all get by.
While Archie and George’s characters in the 1970s were played for laughs, the trope of the husband as sitcom buffoon was subverted in the dark two-season dramedy “Kevin Can F**k Himself” (2021).
Kevin (Eric Petersen) was a stereotypical multi-cam comedy protagonist, a beer-guzzling blue collar worker spouting laugh-tracked one-liners and engaging in self-aggrandizing schemes. But the cost of his jocularity was made clear when wife Allison (Annie Murphy of “Schitt’s Creek”) got so fed up she plotted Kevin’s murder.
Kevin and Allison lived in a rented house in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Allison worked at a liquor store on a tired looking commercial strip while Kevin was a cable installer.
Her aspirations for a better life were expressed in material ways: the red lip tint she bought at an upscale cosmetics store; the prized Pottery Barn coffee table she found at Goodwill; the house she wanted to buy, which she pictured in a recurring fantasy of herself in a pretty dress in a shiny new kitchen pouring beer for a blazer-and-dress-shirt-clad Kevin.
Despite enduring a decade of Kevin’s narcissistic control, Allison’s plans for him didn’t turn deadly until she learned he had drained their savings account and stunted her dreams of moving to a better social class.
TV has been more inclined over the years to portray the working or middle classes than the impoverished. To my mind, though, no TV series has provided as incisive a view of urban poverty as “The Wire” (2002), in which upper mobility for some young Black men was selling heroin on rundown street corners and in dilapidated housing projects in West Baltimore while police fought a no-win “war on drugs.”
Lately, rich people have been in vogue with shows like “The White Lotus” (2021) and its wealthy vacationers, and “Succession” (2018) and its Murdoch-like family of media moguls, but money isn’t a new preoccupation for TV: think ’70s and ’80s rich-folks-behaving-badly dramas like “Dynasty” and “Dallas.”
And if the stealth wealth of the Roys in “Succession” is too low key for you, you can try “Billions” (2016), in which self-made hedge fund billionaire Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis) enjoyed splashing out cash on things like mammoth beach houses and naming rights to landmarks when he wasn’t fighting U.S. attorney Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), a scion of old money.
As Bobby put it, “What’s the point of having f-k you money if you never say f-k you?”
Four seasons of “All in the Family” can be bought from Apple TV. “The Jeffersons” streams at CTV.ca. “Kevin Can F**k Himself” streams on AMC Plus. “Shameless” streams on Netflix. “The Wire,” “The White Lotus,” “Billions” and “Succession” stream on Crave.
