KEN Loach has criticised the scheduling of costume dramas on Sunday evenings instead of plays about the debasement of the working classes.
The director has derided the ‘fake nostalgia’ of shows like Downton Abbey, which he believes should be replaced by gritty dramas about the capitalist corrosion of the human soul.
He said: “If you want a period drama, why not Engels’s classic The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844?
“It’s a page-turner, and everyone can identify with an endless parade of maimed alcoholics dying alone on soot-blackened waste ground where flowers once grew.
“Or there’s plenty of scope for modern dramas about the working poor’s lives of drudgery in mould-streaked hovels, perhaps starring Caroline Quentin.
“I know when the wife and I sit down on a Sunday, we’re ready for forced prostitution, drug addiction or simply suicide. Give the people what they want.”
Loach added that crime dramas would be acceptable as long they followed police efforts to frame mentally ill men for murder while the real culprits got away.
