In Suburbia

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Ian Hislop asks why suburban estates have had such a pull on the creative mind.

Ian Hislop, a citizen of Middle England, asks why these apparently dreary estates have had such a pull on the creative mind.

BBC Radio 4 LW

In Suburbia: Nothing looks the same

Nothing looks the same

BBC Radio 4 - In Suburbia, Nothing looks the same

Ian Hislop completes his series exploring the understated cultural wealth of suburbia.

Ian Hislop comes to the end of his series celebrating culture in suburbia with a look at the extent to which the suburbs in the UK are changing in 21st century.

In spite of the fact that so many of us live, and choose to live, in Suburbia, it's still described as, at best a cultural backwater, and at worst a cultural desert.  Indeed the cultural output of suburbia is often songs and novels and films that describe a striving to escape from this land between the city and the country, or in cultural terms between rural Idyll and Bohemia.  Ian Hislop has long been fascinated by this cultural snobbery, and in three programmes he talks to leading cultural figures who either come from or celebrate Suburbia and Suburban life.
Hanif Kureishi, author of 'The Buddha of Suburbia' is a not so proud son of Bromley, Comedian Lee Mack is star and  writer of the suburban comedy 'Not Going Out' which is now the longest running sitcom on British Television and still uses the familiar tropes of suburban aspiration, gentle class conflict and stability to garner laughs, and JC Carroll of The Members, is the composer whose Punk anthem 'The Sound of the Suburbs' made the tedium of car washing and noisy neighbours a badge of honour'.  All of them discuss their mixed feelings about suburbia, if and how it's changing, and why it remains a place where so many people aspire to live.  
He also visits the suburbs themselves and chats to  The 'Suburban artist' of Woodford, and he looks back at the way the suburbs have developed from their Medieval reputation as the place to dump everything you don't want in the city, to the industrial revolution when the Romantic suburb emerged allowing a new middle class to find a place between the castles and mansions of the aristocracy and the slums of the workers.  

In this final programme Ian is in Ealing, the Queen of the suburbs and home to a hugely diverse community who all value exactly the same things that were valued when the suburbs first began to expand in the late 19th century. But will the new communities change the suburbs or will the natural isolation of the suburban semi forge a new generation of suburban culture?

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In Suburbia

Nothing looks the same

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