Capital City (1989)
- Genre
- drama television series
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Length
- 2 seasons, 24 episodes
- Rated
- 12
- Rating
- 7.0 of 10 from 4 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this series is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
This series follows a group of investment bankers working at a fictional bank in London's financial district. It shows both their high-pressure jobs on the trading floor and their personal lives outside of work.
fast-pacedtenseprofessionalambitiousdramaticgrittyintenseworkplace-drivenearnest
What happens
Capital City is a television series which focused on the professional and personal lives of a group of investment bankers working in the dealing room at Shane Longman, a fictional international bank based in the City of London. The 23-episode series was produced by Euston Films, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thames Television, for the ITV network and that aired from 26 September 1989 to 20 December 1990. Thames Television spent an estimated £500,000 to run newspaper and billboard advertisements to promote the series' launch which at the time was believed to be the largest advertising spend for a programme in the history of ITV. Full-page advertisements were taken in six national newspapers including The Financial Times, The Times and The Independent. The ads promoted the Shane Longman "brand", rather than "Capital City", and featured images of cast members in character. Thames Television stated that the press and poster ads were considered necessary to raise the profile of the series amongst members of the public who had a specialised or more professional interest, however a number of City bankers described the series as "fairly inaccurate", "confusing for the ordinary viewer", and lacking solid research. One television critic stated: "All of this would have been quite novel and exciting three years ago, but the world has turned, the market has crashed and we have all seen enough of other people's Porsches to last a lifetime... City hustlers do not look very heroic any more, just extravagantly paid." Still, it could be argued that most of the characters in "Capital City" – perhaps with the exception of the reckless and predatory Jimmy Destry, power-hungry Lee Wolf and the duplicitous Sylvia Roux Teng – portray City bankers in a generally positive manner. The primary characters come across as likeable and – in contrast to the Gordon Gekko "greed is good" stereotype often associated with their industry – as possessing a moral and/or social conscience; in one episode, the entire dealing room threatens to go on strike in protest against handling a bond issue on behalf of a company which dumps toxic waste in poor African countries and demand that Shane Longman introduce policies which enable them to avoid dealing with clients whom they regard as unethical. Capital City is very much a product of the late 1980s, on the cusp of the digital revolution. The dealing room computers use what appeared to be a MS-DOS; mobile phones are the size of bricks; the primary methods of long-distance "instant" communication are still the land line telephone, fax and telex; and smoking – banned in England, within most public buildings, in 2007 – is still allowed in the workplace as well as inside restaurants, bars and other public places. At the same time, the series dealt with several mature storylines including alcoholism, depression, mental illness, sexual assault, drug use, homosexuality, physical assault, gambling addiction, prostitution, promiscuity, shoplifting, fraud, bribery, corruption and abortion. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
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Taboo (2017)- More like this series, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.