Adam Curtis, the 70-year-old British documentary filmmaker renowned for his distinctive style and incisive cultural critiques, has returned with a new five-part series titled Shifty, now streaming on BBC iPlayer. Set in 2025, the series paints a somber portrait of Britain’s current malaise, capturing a nation where "nothing works, nothing changes, and nothing has come along yet to be the next ‘thing.’" Curtis, who has spent decades exploring the intersections of politics, economics, and culture, delves into the roots of this stagnation by revisiting the final two decades of the twentieth century, a period marked by seismic shifts in power and consciousness.
In a candid interview conducted in an East London café, Curtis reflected on the mood permeating modern Britain. "There’s an anger at the moment," he said, "but also there’s a melancholy. Sadness and dread. Haven’t you noticed it?" This emotional landscape underpins Shifty, which begins in 1978, a pivotal year when Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party was trailing in the polls until Thatcher delivered a controversial speech warning that Britain was being "swamped" by immigrants. The series juxtaposes such headline moments with the lived experiences of ordinary people, including a West Indian family in Bradford watching that very speech, illustrating how political rhetoric and public sentiment intertwined during this volatile era.
Curtis’s hallmark approach—melding archival footage, evocative music, and a hallucinatory narrative style—shines through in Shifty. Yet, in a departure from his previous works, Curtis’s iconic voiceover narration is notably absent, a deliberate choice to let the footage and its emotional resonance speak for themselves. This stylistic shift emphasizes how the transition of power from politics to finance, and the rise of individualism, fractured society and alienated many.
Margaret Thatcher appears in every episode, but Curtis is careful not to cast her simply as a villain. Instead, he portrays her as a "tragic figure," a nuanced characterization that challenges simplistic political narratives. More unexpectedly, the series elevates fashion designer Alexander McQueen as an unlikely hero. McQueen, the son of a taxi driver who rose to prominence on Savile Row, witnessed the elite's inner workings firsthand. His provocative Spring/Summer 2001 Voss show, which dramatized society as a glass box watched by the powerful, encapsulates the era’s tensions. "He got it," Curtis asserts, highlighting McQueen’s acute awareness of societal constraints despite the illusion of freedom.
The series also critiques the liberal middle classes, who, Curtis argues, retreated from politics as their influence waned, turning instead to culture as a form of opposition—though without substantive ideas. "In the 1980s you see this idea that culture is the opposition to the right," Curtis says with a hint of cynicism. "To which the answer is: yeah, that really stopped Mrs Thatcher." This cultural shift masked a deeper loss of political power, leading to a generation educated and idealistic yet unsure how to enact change. Curtis points to contemporary author Sally Rooney’s novels, including last year’s Intermezzo, as emblematic of this class: "highly-educated, reasonably well-off millennials who all want to do something good and change the world. But they don’t know how or why. So they wander around in a melancholy. I find that quite sad." Rooney’s work captures a mood of aimless longing and disconnection that permeates much of today’s educated youth.
This pervasive melancholy is echoed in societal trends such as the rise of ketamine use, which Curtis describes as "obliterating yourself, fleeing from yourself," and the popularity of self-help books like The Body Keeps The Score, which teach people to fear not only the external world but their own bodies. These cultural phenomena underscore a broader crisis of identity and trust.
Tracing back to his earlier documentaries, including 2002’s The Century of the Self, Curtis has long explored how psychoanalytic ideas were co-opted by big business to manipulate individuals into becoming consumers rather than active citizens. He reflects, "It was us," acknowledging society’s role in this transformation. The pursuit of autonomy and niche interests led to "niche-ification," fracturing shared cultural and political experiences. "Everyone went down their own rabbit holes," making collective action increasingly difficult.
Asked about current political leadership, Curtis comments on Labour leader Keir Starmer’s recent description of Britain’s troubles as "a sense of disaffection." While Starmer may address tangible issues like housing or public services, Curtis argues he misses the "more subtle thing: that we have gone into another world." This sentiment extends beyond any single politician: "We haven’t got an artist that can do that, either." He praises musicians like Burial, whose track "Come Down To Us" poignantly underscored air strikes in Afghanistan in Curtis’s 2015 film Bitter Lake, and Ethel Cain, whose album American Teenager conveys "the epicness of the melancholy" following the Iraq War.
Curtis’s distinctive film style, which emerged in the 1990s with the advent of new editing systems allowing for non-linear sequencing, draws parallels with music sampling. About 15 years ago, he refined this approach to mirror the "jumpy" and fragmented way people think and communicate in the digital age. This style resonated deeply with millennials disillusioned by political defeats and social upheavals, earning Curtis a cult following on platforms like YouTube.
Despite his critical eye, Curtis maintains a pragmatic relationship with the BBC, describing it as a "deal" that grants him freedom to produce politically provocative documentaries at low cost. The BBC’s Director General has praised his work, including Bitter Lake and 2022’s TraumaZone, for bolstering internal confidence and offering compelling narratives. Curtis notes that his montage-driven films are economical amid soaring television production costs, contributing to their enduring popularity.
East London, particularly Dalston, features prominently in Shifty as a symbol of culture-led regeneration and property booms. Curtis contrasts the physical hardships that historically sparked revolutions with today’s intangible unrest rooted in "melancholy, dread, loneliness"—emotions that, despite being central to modern identity, have failed to catalyze political change. He muses, "If there is a revolution, it’s probably already happening inside the heads of millions of people right now."
In a separate interview, Curtis elaborated on the cultural stagnation gripping society. He lamented that "four films are being made about The Beatles," 65 years after their formation, likening it to 1960s audiences watching Victorian musicals—an indication of collective nostalgia and creative inertia. He critiqued contemporary pop icon Taylor Swift for embodying a "prim 1950s, almost Doris Day figure," suggesting her work, while artful, fails to capture the complexities of the present.
According to Curtis, the post-pandemic world is marked by a "constant pantomime of hysteria" that distorts our sense of time, leaving people "treading water" with no real progress. Politicians, he argues, lack the language to make sense of this era, leaving citizens feeling powerless and anxious, akin to "being on a plane in turbulence," helpless and fearful.
His latest series, Shifty, chronicles the decline of political power in Britain, culminating in the Millennium Dome’s portrayal as a "cavernous monument to confusion," symbolizing the liberal establishment’s loss of vision. Money, Curtis observes, has become the dominant force shaping consciousness, as younger generations increasingly focus on financial security amid economic uncertainty.
Reflecting on the disappearance of the "real self," Curtis traces this phenomenon to 1998, noting how people’s public personas became performative, a theme visible in BBC archive footage. While this thesis will not be his next project, Curtis is developing a new film examining America through a post-colonial lens, utilizing BBC footage from international outposts in Japan, Korea, India, and China.
Despite his global acclaim and influence, Curtis remains a loyal BBC collaborator, valuing the creative freedom and connection to reality the corporation offers. When not immersed in archives or planning future projects, he unwinds by watching Netflix shows like Emily in Paris, which he describes as having "absolutely nothing to do with reality."
Ultimately, Curtis sees his role as a documentarian as explaining "how we got here," not predicting the future. He emphasizes the importance of good journalism and politics in restoring a sense of proportion and reminding people of their inherent strength: "What’s missing at the moment is knowing that as human beings we are much stronger than we think. We really are." For those seeking to understand Britain’s complex present and the forces that shaped it, Shifty offers a compelling, melancholic, and deeply human narrative.
