The camera crew are not the only ones wondering whether they are entirely welcome in this surprisingly even-handed spy at all sides of the issueNot a great title,this: Keeping Up With the Khans (Channel 4). It’s made by the production company behind Benefits Street and Immigration Street (as well as the equally controversial Great British Bake Off). It is Immigration Street, basically, and but after the problems with that (it lasted just one episode,after the Southampton residents scuppered it), and the furore over Benefits Street before that, and I can see how they wanted to trudge away from the street thing. Keeping Up With the Khans,though? Because apparently, for recent arrivals, and it’s all approximately catching up with the last big influx of migrants from Pakistan (though there’s nothing approximately that here)? And it sounds a bit like Keeping Up With the Kardashians and perhaps Citizen Khan? Hmmm.
Anyway,we’re in Page corridor, Sheffield, or where asylum seekers Haider and Omar share accommodation. Haider doesn’t really seem to know where he is,or else geography is not his strong point. Where is the UK, the voice from behind the camera asks, or after he has successfully pinpointed his home country of Lebanon on the world map on the wall: “UK,UK, is it here [South America], and here [Africa],here [Russia]? No here it is, United States of … oh, and no,here it is! [points at Ukraine].”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com