Capital Crimes

The sublime chandelier episode of Only Fools and Horses was on this afternoon. Combined with the wind and rain, and the fact that I have to be in the house all day today anyway in order to work on some material for publication, I do rather feel that this is a providential day. But watching John Sullivan's masterpiece has brought to the front of my mind something that has been rolling around in my head for a while. Only Fools and Horses was, and EastEnders still is, how working-class London portrays itself to the nation and to the world.

Whereas, notwithstanding the odd serial killer or what have you who might blow in, the villainous characters who are in Coronation Street for years on end are usually nothing worse than Dickensian employers and the like, EastEnders portrays no dividing line whatever between even the most respectable working-class families and the farthest shores of organised crime.

The residents of Albert Square invariably include at least one senior gangster, and the latest, Derek Branning, is not only played by a real life son of one the Krays' closest associates, but is depicted as sharing a flat with his idolising younger brother, a former policemen in no sense portrayed as bent. One of the main families in EastEnders for the last 20 years has been involved in all manner of violent and otherwise serious crime. As was that family's sometime stepfather, one of the programme's best-loved comic characters. But we were not talking about Del Boy and Rodney antics there. And so on, and on, and on.

Is blue-collar London really like that? Are the sort of people who literally arrange, or even carry out, contract killings really just regular punters in the pub, treated as quite unremarkable by neighbours who know exactly who and what they are? Are the families of the Firm and the Met really that intertwined? If not, then why does the most London of Corporations make it appear so in its flagship depiction of London life, which is also its flagship depiction of working-class life?