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BThe latest installment of BC Three opens with a man floating down a London street in a smart black turtleneck and gray suit jacket, eerie string music booming around him. “In a world that is increasingly fragmented,” he begins, looking into the camera as he walks through Knightsbridge, “the BBC has asked me, Shabaz Ali, to answer one burning question: Are billionaires evil?” You could be forgiven for thinking that this was another story of the channel’s genre: well-thought-out and well-produced programmes, hosted by presenters such as Stacey Dooley and Zara McDermott.
Then the camera pans out to reveal another camera on Ali’s face, and the music stops: “Er, yeah,” he says. “He is!” He goes, mocking the end playing at triple speed. As a result, Shabaz Asks: Are Billionaires Evil? It’s not one of those BBC Three documentaries that covers the social needs of the Z generation, but it’s a myth of the genre. It risks sending up one of the things your channel is best known for, as if ITV had started airing a series of madcap episodes where a hard-drinking detective is haunted by an unsolved case 20 years ago.
However, in another way, Shabaz Asks: Are Billions Bad? work. Much of his success was down to Ali himself – the former coach turned TikToker and self-proclaimed “povvo king” from Blackburn. He rose to internet fame after shutting down, taking strange, untouchable things on social media with a straight face (“You can’t afford to buy food from Tesco, let alone $5,000 worth of caviar. Why? Because you’re poor…”) looking when I can’t think of going back.” Then he uses his uber-dry wit to take the mickey out of his people (at the “winter house” of Phones 4u founder John Caudwell in Colorado, Ali asks the host who was not happy with him if he was and “Batcave, or one of the big boards with a map of the world (a) things to conquer”). Elsewhere, the economist Faiza Shaheen is in finance. But she has a very important question: “What are the billions?” Behind the rich seminar that Joseph Valente, who already won on The Apprentice, looks at the letter S on his notepad.
It might sound like Philomena Cunk, more of a comedy than anything else. However, Ali managed to create a very good documentary, by going to such absurdities that the idea of a billionaire begins to sound ridiculous. The leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, makes a good comeback when Ali asks him if his party is spending billions. “I’m more than happy to deport billions of people”, he replies, “because maybe we’re migrants, immigrants, disabled, people who can’t find a job…” Mic drop!
However, more often than not, the “povvo king” shtick gives away what is Ali’s true thoughts and feelings. When he meets Emily Abraham – who sells luxury handbags to celebrities and royalty – he can’t believe it. “I grew up in the working class, my father was a taxi driver, my mother was a housewife,” he explains, “but they managed 20 years ago to buy a house . . . At Abraham’s shop, £190,000 can buy you a Hermès Faubourg Birkin, based on the Paris street of the same name. In Blackburn, they say, it can buy reality a two bedroom house. Abraham grew up in poverty and agrees to a large extent with what he says. “But the reality is that we have people who have money, and they want to use it…”
Are Billions Bad? and the pilot of what could one day be a series, Ali is playing the part of Theroux, the part of Cunk and doing it well. But if it goes ahead, its producers will have to decide if it’s a well-produced, funny show, or one of the most mixed, mixed, and expensive TV shows ever seen. Perhaps the richest are simple to begin with; Of course, says Caudwell, “I’m not a fan of billionaires either.”
