Shifty review – Adam Curtis's new show is an utter rarity: stylish, intelligent TV with something to say

The Guardian

14-06-2025

Hello and welcome to the latest addition to Adam Curtis's growing compendium of documentaries I have unofficially entitled How Did Things Get So Shit? Let Me Explain in a Weirdly Uplifting Manner. Previous volumes include The Century of the Self, The Power of Nightmares, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom, All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, HyperNormalisation, Can't Get You Out of My Head and Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone.
Even if you have not had the challenging pleasure of watching, the titles alone should be enough to evoke most of the concerns found therein – the rise of individualism, the fragmentation of old systems, the political vacuums new people and powers have rushed to fill, the death rattle of formerly dependable entities on which western civilisation has traditionally rested and once allowed us to sleep peacefully at night, the creeping destabilisation of all things, and so very much on.
The new entrant is a five-part series called Shifty. It is a rare purely UK-focused dissection of recent history, built around the idea that the growing atomisation of society has ushered in an age in which the concept of a shared reality on which we can all depend has dissolved – and with it any hope of a functioning democracy. Come on in, guys, the water's lovely! Though we can't even agree that it's wet any more.
In Curtis's trademark telling – a vast, kaleidoscopic assemblage of archive clips from news reports, TV shows, vox pops, pop videos, home videos, celebrity and political profiles and whatever else he has found that serves his purpose, cleverly curated, wittily juxtapositioned and bouncily soundtracked – the decline began, as so many seem to have done, with Margaret Thatcher. The series begins with her opening her study door to a group of children escorted in by her favourite man-of-the-people Jimmy Savile because – well, how could it not? Once that clip had been found, it was going in.
From there, we follow Britain through the 1980s – the Falklands, the Troubles, the miners' strike, Kelvin MacKenzie, Wham!'s first tour, the advent of CCTV, the transformation of houses from homes into assets, art and fashion into diffusion lines, all of them uncoupling the old ways from the new powers, truth from reality or Britain from its moorings in some way. On we go through the next decade as old imperial ways, people and myths struggle to survive under the onslaught of new media, new tech, new economic experiments and a new privileging of individual independence, self-interest and the profit motive that was absolutely never going to end badly for anyone.
New Labour arrives in the fifth and final episode, however, and the idea of society arranged around working for the common good is restored. I'm kidding! 'They couldn't escape the world they had inherited and its pessimism about human motives.' Not simply regarding the electorate – the venality and sleaze that had enshrouded the Tory party over the preceding years (and may I say that there really should be a public health warning any time clips of David Mellor are to be shown, whether or not you lived through the Antonia de Sancha scandal) had also eroded all remaining trust in politicians and Blairites 'just accepted the belief that politicians were always self-interested'. If you watch party conference clips closely, you can see the light in Gordon Brown's eyes gradually going out. The last noble mien.
We stop before Brexit and Donald Trump, but it is clear how Curtis believes the seeds have been sown for all our current sorrows. Is the viewer persuaded? It depends where you start from, of course – I can't speak for anyone who wasn't already halfway there before kick-off as I was – and it will depend perhaps even more on how you feel about this most Marmite of film-makers. Now that I have learned to let his films wash over me, to pay attention but not drill down as they go, then wait and see how they work on my consciousness afterwards, I manage much better and admire much more. But perhaps that is partly a function of context too. It is an increasing rarity to stand in the presence of anyone with an idea, a thesis, that they have thoroughly worked out to their own satisfaction and then present stylishly, exuberantly and still intelligently. The hell and the handcart feel that bit more bearable now.
Shifty is on BBC iPlayer now