Benefits Street: Viewers divide as the community draws closer together

A change is in the air across Britain. A new divide is opening up: not between the rich and the poor, nor indeed the poor against the poor; but instead between those on both ends of the political spectrum who remain outraged at the depiction of the impoverished on ‘Benefits Street’, and the increasing millions that are glued to their screens actually watching it.

The economically inactive are, as irony would have it, proving an extraordinary success for Channel 4. It shouldn’t be surprising – it was after a noisy week of petitions, protests, and pugnacious press pieces that the viewing figures rose from an already impressive 4.1 million to 5 million.

And it’s not just the media who are stoking this: ‘Benefits Street’ is a programme filled to the brim with ‘watercooler moments’, the foodstuff of office chitchat, thus guaranteeing that the only way to keep up with what’s being talked about in the workplace is to follow the lives of people who don’t go anywhere near one.