#yes Hugh Grant is Francis Darcy

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I love how my Salvation moodboard is so dark and then there's just

Adanna ✨

[lucyreviewcy]

Made in Chelsea - S1 E01

Oh that’s right, this is happening. I can’t remember what prompted this, but a couple of days ago I decided to check how much Made in Chelsea is still available on All4. Guess what, great news guys -  all of it. Seventeen delicious seasons. I’m making it my weekly challenge to deep-dive into each episode hoping to find some enlightenment in this absolute masterpiece of constructed reality. 

As a disclaimer: I don’t just want to underline that there are elements of this show that are pure trash. Yes, Spencer Matthews’ hair makes him look like the bad guy from an episode of Columbo. Yes, Millie Mackintosh’s inability to open her mouth enough to enunciate a word drives me nuts. Yes, the storylines ache with forced twists and endless shock hookups. All of the above are true, but you don’t need me to tell you that any more than you need me to tell you the sky is blue. 

Made in Chelsea is fantastically interesting for a lot of reasons. For one, it has managed to run for seventeen seasons across the last eight years. Why? Some of the greatest British TV shows of all time have had chronically short runs, so what makes MIC so enduring?

Secondly, as it chronicles the lives of the super-rich, the show is 100% built on aspiration and jealousy. Something I often like to mention to MIC haters is that the show borrows most of its conventions and characters from Jane Austen, or for a more recent example, Richard Curtis. The characters are all financially comfortable enough that all they have to focus on in life is who they want to marry. Coupling and uncoupling is central to the society of the show. Imagine a world where all that mattered was who you were putting your lips on (a lyric stricken from the John Lennon song because it just didn’t scan properly.)

To push the envelope even further, I have to point out that these characters operate outside of the boundaries of the real world. They’re not restricted by anything - money can open any door to them, meaning they can travel anywhere, do anything and never worry about staying afloat. If you want to get fancy, Made in Chelsea is a peek at the peak of mount Olympus, and it turns out all the gods are doing is shagging and drinking G&Ts. So... pretty much what they’re doing in the Greek myths but with fur coats instead of Golden Fleeces.

My third reason I love MIC is that this show is a gosh-darned time-capsule. In the first episode, everybody’s favourite posh-boy-cum-human-shark Hugo makes a few passing references to Facebook. Made in Chelsea was born at a time when social media was in its infancy. Nobody is talking about Instagram followers or influencers yet, and Cheska’s Girl About Town blog is treated as some strange glamorous novelty. As if blogging is this amazing cool thing. It’s not cool now Cheska. Everyone has a blog. I have three blogs. Shut up about your blog. 

My point is that the media landscape over the last ten years has changed, and with it our concept of what is a desirable lifestyle. A show built on aspiration is a brilliant chronicle of what we thought was cool when it was made.

Having said all of the above, I should probably mention that I also bloody love Made in Chelsea and at the very least my Mum will probably enjoy this blog. Here’s what I thought of episode one.

Episode One - “I’m just hot and I feel like shit.”

A classic Spencer Matthews quote to get the ball rolling. 

After an excruciating Blade Runner-esque voice-over from Caggie Dunlop episode one starts at a party in a bar, thrown by nineteen year old (shock horror she is so young to me now) socialite Amber Atherton to promote her jewelry line. Noteworthy moment number one is that most of the characters in the show have jobs, because we no-longer aspire to somehow be so rich we don’t need to work. These are people who really are so rich they don’t need to work, but they all have jobs based on their “passions” or “creativity,” except for Spencer who is a stock-broker because he was born that way and it isn’t his fault. 

Amber is the epitome of cool, even eight years on. She’s wearing barely a lick of makeup and dressed like a trendy off-duty archaeologist. Tensions develop between her and big-haired, fake-tanned Cheska, whose blog is considered “offensive” by Amber and hat-princess Rosie. Made in Chelsea is definitely a show which pits women against each other, but that is OK  because I don’t get my lessons on gender equality from anything broadcast on E4. (Oh, wait... Gilmore Girls... Never mind.) Both Amber’s pared-down minimalism and Cheska’s full-blown fakery are popular aesthetic choices nearly a decade on. If anything, these style choices are demonstrated in ever more extreme ways by beauty vloggers going all-out on heavy contouring while Pinterest pushes endless “no-makeup makeup” looks at me. Amber, Cheska - there is no need to fight! You are both valid in your style choices. 

There are several incredible moments in this episode, but to list them would take more words than anyone is willing to read on the subject - so I’ll be brief. 

1) The moment when Spencer’s (in a relationship with Funda) asserts that he and Caggie will “probably hook up at some point” is followed by the lyrics “and the love kick-starts again...” because, you know, what is more romantic than a man suggesting that even though he’s in a relationship he’ll probs bang you some time. Thanks Spenny, you classy. 

The whole exchange between Hugo and Spencer is actually brilliant because it establishes, from the off, that Spencer is a walking satire of bro-culture. Later, we even see him cut between sensitive, nerdy Francis as he tries to woo the Cagster after her “gig” (as an aside: we don’t see her sing a note but that somehow adds to the magic.) This moment is literally the uber-masculine Gaston-type kicking every character Hugh Grant played in the 90s in the balls. Perfect, it’s good to know where we stand. 

2) The Charles Dickens/Jane Austen/A. A. Milne debate. This moment, a discussion between Binky (brilliant, loveable Binky) Cheska and Ollie, is iconic. Binky can’t remember who wrote Winnie the Pooh, asks if that was Charles Dickens, then says “Oh, no, that was Pride and Prejudice.”

Look its funny to watch rich people get confused by literature, OK?

3) This is my final point but it’s a biggie. The show uses one of my favourite absolutely nutso sexist tropes: “Woman refuses to have sex with her significant other while he is all gross and sweaty ERGO she is a stick in the mud and no fun at all.” 

For another prime example of this trope, see Julia Louis-Dreyfus in National Lampoons’ Christmas Vacation. 

This trope is utterly mad, but again - at least the show is spelling out where Spencer stands. He’s an asshole. The show is telling us that he’s an asshole. And yet for some reason our protagonist whose full name I presume is Cagoule Elizabeth Dunlop, is pursuing him. 

What? 

Why would anyone pursue a guy who makes it clear from his first entrance into the narrative that he’s a walking catastrophe of stereotypical masculinity and misogynist values???

And here we come back to Jane Austen, and the basic fact that Mr Darcy is a GARBAGE PERSON. He’s straight up rude to Elizabeth and we know he’s sexist because it’s the past, and yet for some reason...we root for them. I’m genuinely interested to re-watch this narrative unfold, because surely the show doesn’t expect me to want Caggie to get with Spencer? Right? 

There we have it, the first episode of Made in Chelsea unpacked for you like a backpack at the end of term, full of hidden treasures, trash and merits you had forgotten about. Tune in next time for more lukewarm takes on telly.