Let’s talk money...
SCREEN STAR BRIAN COX EXPLORES THE GROWING DIVIDE BETWEEN THE HAVES AND HAVE NOTS
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE WITH BRIAN COX Channel 5, 9pm
SUCCESSION’S ruthless media mogul Logan Roy would sell his own kids to make a fast buck.
Actor Brian Cox refers to Logan as his “evil twin”, but in this documentary he is swapping the role of foul-mouthed billionaire for intrepid reporter.
He says: “I want to find out what money does to you, to me, how it affects all our lives and why the world is becoming so divided between the haves and the have nots.”
It’s a personal quest too. The Hollywood actor grew up in poverty in Scotland after his father died leaving the family destitute.
Brian was the youngest of five children in a working-class Catholic family in one of the more impoverished areas of Dundee, where his father was a shopkeeper.
As the grocer to a poor community, Brian’s father knew that his customers could not always afford the food they needed, and so would give it to them “on tick”; by the time of his death, when Brian was just eight years old, his father had just £10 in the bank.
This leaves Brian well placed to comment on the vast disparity of wealth in today’s society – a gap that just keeps growing.
He admits he has a complicated relationship with money due to his fear of poverty.
With wry humour and some straight-talking, Brian speaks to people from all walks of life.
From a soup kitchen in the Bronx to the homeless in Harlem, to a billionaire in London’s most expensive house, it’s an exposing, thought-provoking trip.
He visits Ozwald Boateng tailors on Savile Row where he meets social media star Kiddwaya – who reveals that money is a burden as well as a privilege, shedding light on Brian’s own complicated feelings about wealth and inheritance.
The episode begins, however, in Miami, which has enjoyed/ endured a massive property boom and today seems like a playground of the rich.
Here he meets two women whose lives have been changed forever by this boom: Senada used to work for Donald Trump and now makes millions on every house sale she closes; Elsa, meanwhile, is being evicted from her home to make way for more luxury apartments and condos.