Money problems: have we had enough of TV shows about rich people?

Shows such as Sirens, The Better Sister, And Just Like That and Your Friends and Neighbours have found little to say about the uber-wealthy

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s fun as it was, Mountainhead seems to have broken something in quite a lot of people. For some, it was simply too timely. After all, it’s one thing to release a film about tech billionaires fighting over the remnants of a world ravaged by war and AI, but quite another to do it while that exact thing was really happening.

For others, Mountainhead marked the point where ultra-rich antiheroes reached full saturation. Writing in the AV Club last week, Saloni Gajjar made the argument that – between Mountainhead, Your Friends & Neighbors, The White Lotus and Nine Perfect Strangers – we have now arrived at a moment where television seems unable to tell stories that are about anything but the badly behaved rich.

Gajjar’s point is well made, but I think the truth might be a little bit more insidious than that. Yes, we do appear to be in the middle of an unceasing wealth glut on television, but the problem isn’t just rich antiheroes. It’s the rich, full stop.