Social mobility is a joke: Working-class women and British TV comedy on ‘the social floor’

This article examines a range of recent autosociobiographical representations of and by working-class women in the contemporary UK, focusing on Rain Dogs , Chewing Gum and Alma’s Not Normal . It argues that what unites these different representations – all of which are TV comedy-dramas, some with connecting iterations as memoir and play – is a vigorous critique and rejection of the neoliberal meritocratic dream. These representations show that the idea of a level playing field in which working hard to activate talent results in success is simply not a possibility for most working-class women: upwards social mobility is a joke. Yet crucially, this situation is not simply portrayed as a thwarted tragedy of the downtrodden, or as poverty porn in the tradition of reality TV. Instead, through life-affirming exuberant comedy, they show how the wider socio-political landscape is unjust while energetically refusing to accept its limits or internalise its stigma: they ‘reject respectability’. Unlike the majority of autosociobiographies, these representations primarily use a comedic tone. Their focus is not on ‘escape’, ‘transcendence’ or the aspiration for a middle-class life, but on the complexities of working-class lives as lived in context, and on critiquing institutional structures. They do value collective community support and crave the security of putting a ‘social floor’ on their circumstances, of not having to constantly worry about losing everything. Considering why the televisual is a useful vehicle for these narratives, the article asks: what do these women’s exuberant rejections of neoliberal meritocracy and bourgeois standards of judgement indicate about the wider cultural, social and political context, or current conjuncture?