What if TV shows about the ultra-rich are making us selfish and insensitive?

“The action is no longer relevant, because there is no action. The raison d'être of the series is now to string together visual expositions of all the things that money can buy, as if we were watching an animated version of a special edition of Vogue or Architectural Digest. ”

At the end of May, And Just Like That…, the sequel to the cult series Sex and the City, returned for a third season (watch it in France on Max). A quarter of a century after their creation, its New York heroines no longer have any money worries. Whether they've made their fortune or made a happy marriage, they lead a luxurious existence, and Sophie Gilbert, the television critic for The Atlantic , makes no secret of her boredom with their adventures.

The American journalist denounces a fundamental trend that appeared in the mid-2000s, with series like Desperate Housewives , Entourage and Newport Beach. Today, too many fictions depict the daily lives of the ultra-rich, from Sirens (Netflix) to Complicités (Prime Video) , via Mountainhead (Max), she writes. And others, just as numerous, depict characters who never seem to tremble when the end of the month approaches.

For Sophie Gilbert, the situation is critical. “The lives of 99% of Americans are no longer represented on the small screen, and that's something vital that has disappeared,” she argues.

“Money doesn't just make television boring. It also transforms our collective psyche—as if it becomes a given that wealth is the only marker of a worthwhile existence, and that the wealthy are the only people worth paying attention to.”

These series would have us believe, not without cynicism, that money doesn't buy happiness and that very rich people are also very unhappy or very mean. But to what effect? ​​The American journalist cites as an example a study by the London School of Economics, published in 2018, which showed that the more a person was exposed to programs highlighting luxury and wealth, the more inclined they were to accept a reduction in social benefits.

Worse, the omnipresence of the happy few on our screens deprives us of opportunities to feel empathy for characters from other social classes, to explore “the full humanity and complexity of so many ordinary people who are increasingly living on the edge, and who need us to take them into consideration more than ever,” continues the journalist from The Atlantic.

Sophie Gilbert concludes her article by calling for more series like the hospital drama The Pitt (about Max), which is adept at showing “employees struggling to plug the gaps in an increasingly unequal American society.” Or The Bear (returning June 25 for a fourth season on Disney+), which follows the struggle of fast-food employees to stay afloat, both professionally and personally. These series are more than ever “necessary to watch, as what we pay attention to today will determine what our future holds,” she insists.