ABSTRACT
Representations of social class are an inevitable, recurrent presence in British documentary, sometimes explicitly engaged with but much more often indicated obliquely in relation to occupation, accent, dress, and the social settings in which a documentary account develops. Through a detailed examination of its organisation and examples of its local textual detail, this chapter suggests that All in the Best Possible Taste develops an account of social class with an immersive and performative character quite original in British television. The opening emphasis on the "ethnographic" eye is vigorously complemented in the programme itself by Grayson Perry's strongly performative role, in which the "experience of class" is briefly sampled in order to inform the external assessment. As in the Sunderland programme, Perry positions himself as inside the middle class despite his origins. Tunbridge Wells itself provides an opportunity to assess what is going on within the more established middle class.
