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Author: SonofRojBlake

Jul 11th 2012 at 5:49:05 AM

There must be a trope (can't find it) that conveys that this is partly a cultural dissonance thing - lifestyles portrayed in American television as blue-collar poor come across to Brits as being comfortably-off middle class. This is partly because of InformedPoverty, partly because it's easier to film in an unrealistically big house, and partly because the USA is just a much much richer country and some of the signifiers of wealth (spacious housing, a car, food) are objectively far, far cheaper there than in the UK. This is exacerbated by the fact that UK drama featuring the poor tends towards the grittily realistic with no regard for how easy it is to film - working-class characters in UK soaps generally live in realistically cramped, shabby homes.

Example: in ''The Middle'', we're supposed to believe that the Hecks are basically quite poor - she's an unsuccessful bottom-rung car salesperson and her husband gets laid off from the quarry. Yet even on this low single income they have a house which by UK standards is very large, and no apparent difficulties raising three children and running a couple of cars.