Remember Immigration Street? The pesky younger sibling of Benefits Street, it was supposed to be a “controversial” new Channel 4 series. But then the residents of Derby Road, Southampton, unhelpfully decided that they didn’t much fancy taking part after all – at which point, the company behind it, Love Productions, was in effect run out of town. In the end, it had only enough material to put out a single, feeble film, screened last February.
Oh, well. If at first you don’t succeed. Keeping Up With the Khans (Thursdays, 9pm) has a chummier title than Immigration Street but its impulses appear to be roughly the same, playing as they do on the prejudices of both left and right. When, for instance, a pasty-faced man called Bert spoke in the first episode about immigrants’ “easy lives” from the low-slung seat of his shiny mobility scooter, I took against him instantly. Doubtless the series producers kid themselves that it is precisely this kind of response they’re after; that, by forcing weedy liberals to face up to their own intolerance, the racism of others will suddenly seem more complicated.
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