Richard Curtis is nervous about the effect Netflix is having on Britishness. Speaking at the Cheltenham literature festival, he said the platform’s campaign to buy up top British talent will lead to an artificial depiction of the country around the world. “I worry that things are going to get bent away from what we know into a sort of slightly sanitised, cleaned up and commercialised version of what we view as that experience,” he said.

This – from Richard Curtis! The man whose entire cinematic output is about posh white people running through a twinkling picture-postcard fairyland, where British life is so sanitised and commercialised that it is roughly three buckets of fog and a plate of tripe away from being an exact reproduction of what Americans saw when they thought about London in the 50s. Not convinced? Here are four examples.

Four Weddings and a Funeral

Within the first two minutes of the 1994 romcom, a man has driven a Land Rover through a cobbled village. Not a single surface in the film isn’t daubed in a Laura Ashley print. Most damning of all is the end-credits song, performed by Wet Wet Wet. Curtis could have chosen any band in the world. He chose Wet Wet Wet.

Notting Hill

Despite being set in the west London location best known for its annual carnival led by members of the African-Caribbean community, Notting Hill is one of the whitest films ever made. The protagonist is so posh that, when he pretends to be a journalist, the publication he claims to work for is Horse & Hound.

Love Actually

At least the cast includes a prominent black figure, Chiwetel Ejiofor, although he exists primarily to get upstaged by Egg from This Life. The rest of the film presents a distorted view of the country. For example: people at Heathrow displaying emotions other than exhausted frustration; and a prime minister who isn’t trying to destroy the country in pursuit of his legacy. A complete fraud.

Yesterday

A film in which people listen to and enjoy songs by the Beatles, without any of the historical or cultural context that led to the Beatles’ initial popularity, in the year 2019, when one of the biggest songs of the year is about a cowboy who raps about how much he likes boobies. Ridiculous.