TV dramas produced in the 1990s – which have often been unfavourably compared with those from the so-called ‘golden age’ due to their supposedly audience pleasing and derivative focus on ratings after 1980s deregulation – still have an important part to play in studies of social class in UK TV drama. While more traditional themes of social class in programming, such as working-class perspectives and social-realist approaches, waned in the 1990s, the fact that commissioning became increasingly audience-led at this time allows an insight into some of the prevailing goals, aspirations and self-image of class-society in the post-Thatcher era
