My children will never experience the hedonistic freedom of the 1990s

It was the Nineties cult TV drama that explored living and working in London while contemplating turning 30 as your social life, love life and career plans all felt precarious.

Now This Life itself is turning 30.

First aired on March 18 1996, this middle-class soap immediately felt close to (rented) home for me and my peer group: “Drink, drugs and casual sex on a weeknight? Oh go on then.”

There hadn’t been a show that so neatly coincided with where we were for almost 20 years – and This Life did social realism a lot better than early Grange Hill had.

The spring and summer of 1996 was the zenith of that hedonistic decade. The four months that followed This Life’s impactful debut brought us the peak of so-called Cool Britannia, a celebratory notion which now seems impossibly quaint, as well as the joyous hysteria around Euro 96, Oasis at Knebworth and finally the Spice Girls’ arrival on the, er, cultural scene.

The show featured five law graduates in their first jobs living in a houseshare in south London: Milly (Amita Dhiri) and Egg (Andrew Lincoln), who were in a relationship which might be doomed, Anna (Daniela Nardini) and Miles (Jack Davenport), who weren’t in a relationship but were occasionally shagging, and Warren (Jason Hughes), who was gay.

In a sense it was the UK’s riposte to the already globally enormous Friendsbut with the gloss and canned laughter removed and the addition of the inevitably Brit Pop-heavy soundtrack, curated by a then-unknown Ricky Gervais. Jane Fallon (Gervais’s long-term partner) was the producer.

It ran for two series, 12 months apart. Monday nights on BBC Two – I suspect they chose this slot as it was the only night most of the target audience would be in – were suddenly where it was at. Everyone I knew watched it.

The dilemma its characters faced was for us very recognisable, pitting the ambition of establishing oneself professionally against the ingrained habit of self-indulgence – do you live sensibly for long-term reward or succumb to short-term gratification and bugger the consequences? Or, to put it another way: will you wake up in your own bed on a work morning?

It was a strong relate from me, because I was in the process of navigating these choices myself.

In March 1996, I was in my 20s, living in a rented flat and single. By December I would be in my 30s, a homeowner and married.

I had been living in shared flats across London for the best part of a decade. The most I ever paid was £50 a week. But I was now in the process of buying a two-bedroom ex-council flat just off Canonbury Square in Islington. Its £67,000 price was almost four times my £17,500 salary but credit was bountiful and asset checks minimal. In fact, I was able to borrow the £5,000 deposit and repay it immediately with the “cashback” incentive for taking out the mortgage in the first place. What a scam.

I first met Sian, my wife-to-be, when we were sitting on adjacent bar stools in a nightclub, Subterranea in Ladbroke Grove, in May that year. I remember thinking she looked more like Milly but behaved like Anna. She thought I had the same haircut as Jack Davenport. These were popular terms of reference.

She would be my first serious relationship in some time and I felt much happier immediately. For I had become increasingly jaded by my debauched single life: endless pubs, clubs, bars and parties, routinely staying up all night, living it up, chilling back down, drinking too much, smoking furiously, dabbling with recreational pharmaceuticals, flitting from one short-term girlfriend to another.

Suddenly I started seeing the appeal of other, quieter things: birdwatching, the National Trust, going to the Royal Opera House instead of Ministry of Sound. Still impetuous – it would take a while longer for me to learn to be more circumspect – I found myself proposing within weeks.

We married just before Christmas, at Marylebone Town Hall, like the rock stars we thought we were but eventually proved not to be. And we had our first child two years later.

And in the light of all this, I look at our three children now – aged 27, 24 and 19 – and I honestly feel sorry for them. They’re all doing relatively well – accomplished young people who have all already outperformed me by most metrics, from academic achievement to life skills – but they simply wouldn’t recognise the world of This Life, and the lost freedoms and opportunities it captured.

Our oldest is in secure and promising employment but the idea of her ever being able to afford a home similar to my Islington flat is preposterous – its price has risen tenfold while salaries have gone up just 2.5 times. She’d need to be earning £200,000 and have a £50,000 cash deposit. So no Islington for her. But perhaps if she continues striving she might one day have the financial wherewithal to buy a small new-build in Zone Five.

The middle one recently achieved an excellent degree only to launch himself into a job market where demand for graduates has completely collapsed. Identifying as a straight, white male did little to improve his prospects. He’s now moving to Canada.

The youngest is in the first year of a Maths degree just as the chorus of warnings about AI rendering such hard-won skills redundant is reaching a crescendo.

All three will be saddled with student loan debt in the region of £50,000 for the same qualification their parents got for free. And their rent, if they ever move out, will be a lot more than £50 – a little over £1,000 per room per month is the norm now for equivalent flats.

As well as being worse off they are also more self-conscious. In our day, a little bad behaviour might necessitate what used to be called “the walk of shame” the next morning – embarrassing but quickly forgotten. Now social media means a messy night can become an indefinite stain.

Even our generation’s Gulf War, the first of two against Saddam, had felt less menacing to global financial security than the current equivalent. They inhabit a more volatile world.

No wonder this generation obsesses about mental health and spends money on exotic travel and smashed avocado toast. And if they can’t afford property, will they ever be able to afford to start families? It currently feels ambitious for them to even dream of one day owning their own cat.

All three have inherited our fondness for partying but have not had the freedom to indulge it to the extent that we did.

This Life showed a generation of young people agonising about their futures. We never dreamed we would end up agonising about our children’s futures – and how much less promising they would appear to be than ours turned out.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]