"You watch the whole of the BBC output, and certainly the whole of the drama output, and – forgetting the clichés in soaps – poor people do not exist. Where occasionally they do, they are smirked at or derided as chavs.
"People outside the south east, one or two boroughs in west London and Westminster, virtually don't exist either. It's as though the BBC only recruits Alisons and Jeremys [filmmakers] from the Home Counties who make culture that appeals to them, but who occasionally go to remote regions of the planet like Doncaster as visiting anthropologists, either to be amused by or shocked by the behaviour of the tribe there. The move to Salford is a small but useful gesture, but … they are patronising, if they're not ignoring, most of the people of this country."

(Tony Garnett)