London 'Family' Houses on TV

[PipinwasAuntieMabelsdog]

Non Londoner, living outside of London here. DH parents live in London in a non posh (downright scruffy when they moved in, normal family DH Mum Dr recep, dad a cabby, older parents, 4 kids in 2 double and box room 3bed) former outside London area, which has been poshed up a bit (coffee shops, high street stores etc have replaced the 'old functional' shops. Yet, when I watch tv shows like Outnumbered, Motherland, My Family, everyone seems to live in massive houses with gardens in places like Chiswick and Wimbledon, am I right in thinking that this would be impossible for non-millionaires?

My neck of the woods is not really shown on TV, with the exception of Cutting it and Coronation Street, but when it is, it seems a bit more realistic. Why is London always presented in such an unrealistic way for 'normal families'? or am I wrong? Do families live like that more frequently than I realise?

I think Afterlife was filmed in Beaconsfield which is super expensive commuter belt.

Friday Night Dinner, like Outnumbered and My Family, are all realistic for the characters' ages. They'd have been buying in the early nineties (and pre-children do both of them would have had full time jobs) when houses like that, in zone 3/4 and a fair hike from the Tube would have been very affordable for a couple with two "normal" jobs.

Remember that the population of London in 1991 was the lowest it had been since the time of Queen Victoria.

@NOTANUM I don’t really know. It seemed like Jenny would have struggled to live in that house

Yes it’s absolutely ridiculous. But then it’s the same the in New York and most American shows - their house prices are even worse than ours! In NY Brooklyn is now London and the whole of Manhattan is multimillionaires

Came here to say the same. They need space to put the camera crew.

Are the houses in Cold Feet typical family homes in Manchester? Surely TV programmes tend to be aspirational and having a lovely film set makes for a different vibe than filming in a 2 bed flat?

@tenbob that looks different to the house I remember

Anna friel’s characters house in Marcella was a house near Battersea park which is worth about £1.8m.

her dh was rich though wasn't he

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-7995011/amp/The-Split-viewers-swoon-lawyer-Hannah-Sterns-stunning-family-home.html

Sorry, I posted the wrong link!

it’s on Macaulay road in Clapham…

I’ll find the right link.

It's just TV not particularly realistic. It's the same with Friends. Monica's flat would have cost a fortune and she was just a chef. Although in the last episode they said rent cap made it a steal.

Outnumbered was more middle class, the house had to show this although obviously not very realistic but the comedy was about the kids.
Only fools and horses or The Royal family were comedy shows based around failure as seen in their living conditions. When the Trotters did finally become millionaires they had to lose it all or the show wouldn't be the same.

tbf Hannah could afford that house, she would bought when they were much cheaper & would be earning at least 1m

In Coronation Street anyone who comes into the street who is supposed to have a bit of money (think Mike Baldwin's son played by Bradley Walsh who moved up from Essex for example) moves into an available tiny terraced house on the street when I reality that wouldn't have happened. At least now they move into the flats which are supposed to be a bit more swanky.

We lived on the street where Outnumbered was filmed (in a very grotty flat I might add!). Very normal houses if you ask me anywhere else in the country but yes, in that location the houses went for £££.

Of course thousands of families live in Chiswick, Wimbledon etc but they have a lot of money or have been there for generations. Or rent but that’s still ££ compared to the same house in another place.

Totally agree. I grew up near there and they live in the sort of house a lot of families I knew did. Parents (often just fathers) doing professional jobs but not super rich at all. The house prices will have risen around the inhabitants over the years.

Corontation Street is not really a good comparator as they are filming 200+ episodes per year every year, so they can afford to build elaborate sets that look like terraced houses but actually have a lot of space for filming.

Sitcoms that only film six episodes a year and might not be expected to run for more than a few series don't have the budget for anything like that which is why they film in big houses instead.

Shows like Outnumbered were made in the 90s dont forget.Houses everywhere have increased hugely in value since then .They would probably not have been able to afford it now .EastEnders again in 1985 probably lots renting .

People always bring up Outnumbered but they are about the same age as me and when I was in my late 20s DH and I bought a house exactly like theirs but without the kitchen extension in Balham for £116k which was well within our means. The last time I looked at Zoopla it had sold for over £900k which is outside of the reach of a teacher and an office manager but although the back story wasn't give I assumed that they had bought it before they had DC and when prices were reasonable.

Outnumbered wasn’t made in the 90s, we lived on that street in 2012 and they were filming then.

It started in the mid to late 2000s. Not the 90s.

I’d somehow not really twigged outnumbered was in London and so thought that was a very “normal” sort of house. I mean in an lots of regional towns you could have a nice Victorian type house with a garden and decent kitchen diner etc on a teacher‘s salary, you certainly could when outnumbered came out and in a lot of places you still could now (I know a family where mum and dad both teach one full time one v part time and they have a similar house to that but in a SW town not London). So for those of us with little or no London specific knowledge that all looks perfectly normal and the “family crammed into a teeny expensive flat” while technically more accurate would look wildly unrealistic to us (me).

But I think the argument is given they have a 12yo son in series 1, they probably were supposed to have bought in the 90s.

It’s just age. In the 90s ordinary people could live in areas of London that are now considered trendy or posh. I have friends that bought houses in places in zone 2 on normal salaries in the late 90s. I rented in areas of London that would be totally unaffordable now and I never paid that much in rent, it was affordable. So it’s not that unbelievable. In the Split the characters would have bought first flats in the mid 90s maybe and sold and moved up etc. Some people buying in London in the 90s made a LOT of profit.

yes lots of london was affordable, it wasn't that desirable in many places

It's always been the case that TV homes tend to be far outside the realistic budget of the people living in them.
Monica's flat in Friends was rent controlled and they only paid a few hundred a month. If it wasn't it would have been several thousand and way out of their budget.
Carrie Bradshaw (Sex in the City) only paid $750/ month for hers - the reality would have been four times that.
The apartments in Girls were more realistic as Lena Dunham made a particular point that the size and location should be.