I have seen quite a few episodes of this and it is gently and nicely done. They usually pick poor families where people work for example whereas the "poverty porn/benefits porn" type shows don't and both families are usually pretty nice. Sometimes the rich ones are not really that rich at all but I suppose they are in contrast and in one series I watched the biggest difference was the rich ones did not have children until their 30s and husband wife both had careers and the poor ones the mother was either single parent and/or they had their children very young and did not have qualifications.
I agree it is a little formulaic eg every episode the poor couple go to a posh restaurant yet not all rich couples do. I just about hardly ever eat out even out of lock down although I sometimes do. In fact one reason some are rich is because they don't eat out and don't spend large amounts on clothes.
Also they always come up with some huge amount to give to the poor in cash that the rich couple has in spare cash as it the rich couple would then spent it. You get rich by NOT spending it.
The show does not show their gross income. I tends to be something like a bunch of cash handed out to spend and the rich couple will be given £75.50 for the week's food and spending and the poor couple will be given £1800.
I am probably in the fairly well off category and the sorts of things I spend on over the years have been full time childcare for babies, school fees, university fees (currently - so no student loans for children), mortgage (at one point it was £90k a year! after my divorce and in times of higher interest rates), holidays- sometimes up to £20k a year as there are a lot of us - 5 children; and most of all savings. Eg I have been helping each child buy a first property and currently any spare money goes into that "fund" (and of course about half that comes in goes into an account just for HMRC for income tax, NI and VAT which I just pay twice a year/quarterly so all has to be set aside ready for that). At one stage both the girls had a horse kept on full livery and did show jumping which was very expensive at the time. Lots of much richer people than I am will also have lots of money put into investments, pension funds etc too.
Anyway I like the show and will look it up again. I has its formula which seems to work but I would like them to talk about some additional issues sometimes.
Each week the amount the rich family spend on activities for children and house cleaners coming into the house I've seen too in the show and sometimes what the woman spends on her hair each week etc. We used to have a full time daily nanny (as have 5 children and we both worked full time), someone each morning to do the washing, ironring, put clothes away, clean for the 7 of us and she put the supermarket delivery of food away each week, after I divorced I had a gardener for a time once a week but actually we both like gardening so mostly have done it ourselves. We also had someone on Saturday and Sunday mornings when we worked to look after the toddler twins at one point - nice sixth form girls. At another stage with 3 children under 10 in the 1990s we had someone at weekends to drive the 3 children to parties - they tended to have at least one each every weekend often 04 minutes drive away as they were in 3 separate private schools...sorry I am just going on a bit - i was just remembering what a fair bit of money was spent on (and let us not forget my divorce - most expensive thing ever and husband got well over half, my life savings etc etc)