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I am sick of seeing the rich and powerful on my screen. Where are all the TV shows about normal people?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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Atlanta, Black Mirror, Severance, Silo, The Terror: Infamy, Slow Horses, The Bear, Black Bird, Baby Reindeer, Station Eleven, Russian Doll. Most of what I've seen recently that was produced in the last few years has been primarily about people who are not wealthy or privileged.
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I read some article the other day, how they had noticed a heavy attempt, by Hollywood, to glamorise and humanise ultra rich, like Yellowstone. Is that so we just sit back and shut up and let the billionaires be. Fk that.
Same way that tv shows glorify cops who break the rules and disregard suspects rights. It’s so that we cheer for cops who break the rules and excuse them for “doing what you need to do to catch the bad guy”.
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Bob's burgers.
Bob's Burgers breathes class consciousness. There's an episode where the kids are forced to volunteer through school, and the rich landlord makes no secret that he's exploiting their free child labor to clean up his beach. The concept of collective bargaining is played with when the kids decide they don't want to do that work for free. That episode also includes the lesson that the rich will absolutely use you and screw you over to further their own desires.
The rich landlord is frequently shown dicking around as if the people around him are playthings. In another episode, his tenants decide to hold a rent strike. The landlord uses classic divide and conquer strategy to turn the other tenants against Bob, the leader of the strike, via a water balloon contest (it makes sense in context.)
That's not even touching the realistic struggles that Bob, Linda, and their family have to live with day-to-day. Despite characters sometimes being, well, completely wackadoo, it's probably the most relatable animated show I know of.
Well put and I agree, for that same reason I really didn’t like the movie though. Its message is basically summed up as “you can commit murder but only if you’re rich enough.”
The brothers should have drowned in that submarine is all I’m sayin
The message should be a wake up call then. It’s saying “Look at the reality we live in - this shit actually happens”.
Normal people are boring. I want to watch TV shows about wizards.
But not the kkk wizards. And if so, be Rick and Morty chopping them into little pieces like the trash they are.
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New Taskmaster series just dropped with Jason Mantzoukas for us plebs.
Maximum Derek!
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I don't keep up with current shows but here are my favorites from the last 20 years or so, not exactly about "normal" people but they aren't rich:
Raising Hope
Firefly
Battlestar Galactica
Trailer Park Boys
Malcolm in the Middle
The Middle
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The New Girl
Tbh there really are a shit ton more TV shows about normal people than about rich people. Not sure how you are even having trouble finding them. And of course there are always game shows.
Raising Hope was great, especially the first couple seasons.
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What really resonated with me was watching shows like Roseanne.
The article then goes on to ignore The Connors which aired from October 2018 to April 2025.
Yes, if you ignore all of the shows about "normal people", you'll suddenly find no shows about "normal people".
The Connors went on that long? I'll have to check it out. I figured with Roseanne having gone off the deep end it wouldn't hold up much longer.
Nope, they killed her off with fent, made suing the drug company a storyline, and then did like 5 more seasons.
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The biggest reason I dropped Succession during first season. I have no interest in watching some rich fucks and on top of that there is not one likable character in that show.
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Skills issue.
Japan has an incredible wealth of entertainment in their TV shows. I highly reccomend KASSO! Its ninja warrior but with skating they have English guests and translations on their YT channel.
Usually non US shows and Movies are alot better imho. Another something you should not sleep on are UK TV shows. Like: The Responder a show about a first responder who is struggling with mental illness and the pressure of his work.
So broaden your horizon, The industry is not as bad as you think
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I haven't seen it but I've heard good things about Adolescence?
I was gonna say that British TV has more realistic or normal people. However I haven't seen much of that recently. It's mainly Taskmaster and Black Mirror.
Shameless: "am I a fucking joke to you?"
Since the wealthy fund the shit, anything to do with the commoner is portrayed as trashy, just above literal refuse with regard to usefulness, while the wealthy are portrayed as the righteous and just, with money to fix all the problems they face and any moral failings related to them is the result of something outside their wealth.
I adored superstore. I love how I think back of the show and nothing comes to mind because everything was painfully ordinary.
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Judge Judy, Hoarders, and Cops
I dunno if you’re being sarcastic here but wow, what a low opinion of normal people!
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I am sick of "history" shows and movies that are completely inaccurate. There are so many unbelievable stories that fiction always takes a backseat for me if I were to choose between a history or sci-fi book for example. Shogun is extremely guilty of this, it had great production but the details were sickeningly incorrect, in Japan people were pissed because it's an opportunity to teach about culture and every Japanese knows the real story and details of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Americans have already been propagandizing and manipulating history in many ways since decades past, there is much change to be done.
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Here it is:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0287254/
That was a joke due to the English name, but Brazil is actually pretty good at making shows and movies about normal, ordinary people.
Check out the cartoon Aggretsuko. Not from this year but from this decade.
Yeah, it's a cartoon about anthropomorphic animals, but the characters are all very normal people, personality-wise. So normal, I got sick of watching how normal they were.
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Such content already exists.
There's a Streisand Effect that occurs when writing about what you don't want instead of lifting up what you do want.
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Watch Andor, if you wanna see ordinary people fight the power
Detectorists
Northern Exposure
Abbott Elementary
All Creatures Great and Small
Black Books
Bored to Death
Bridget & Eamon
The Cafe
Cheers
The Cleaner
The IT Crowd
King of the Hill
Letterkenny
Peep Show
Shameless
Spaced
Tacoma FD
Taxi
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