So it's working-class plotlines you're looking for then? I wonder what middle-class plotlines are in your opinion. Making investments? Buying new Houses? Fighting about inheritance? Golfing? Moving house to better school areas?
Maybe the thing is just that TV drama is increasingly about the extraordinary rather than real mundane life. As the writer of "Taking over the Asylum" said in a recent Guardian article about how her show wouldn't have seen the light of day in today's TV climate:
In the past year, I have been approached about writing two television dramas. The first was a story about the mother of a severely disabled child who, overwhelmed by the responsibility of looking after him, fantasises about bashing his head against the wall. The situation is resolved when the child is placed with a foster mother, and the natural mother goes back to the work she loves. The second was a story about two depressed teenagers who fall in love, and then deal with their alienation and rage by going on a killing spree and murdering their classmates. In the face of a rash of teenage suicides, where is the drama that explores why children with their whole lives in front of them choose to end them? Where is the drama that depicts the battles fought by parents of disabled children to get and keep their kids in mainstream education, to obtain any kind of support from their local authorities, to find housing for their children when they reach adulthood?
It is barely there. It is almost invisible. Because, in a media environment now infatuated with "high concept" drama, stories that reflect life as it is actually lived by its audience are no longer considered to "make good television". Just like that, we've come full circle. My hope is that these stories will find a way to come round again.
And if it's working-class plotlines you're looking for, you should really check out Shameless. Its first series is about the big sister raising her a large number of younger siblings because the father is a jobless drunk and the mother has run away. In the later series, the big sister has left too.
And as for its drama credentials, its first series won the BAFTA for Best Drama, not comedy. So there you go.