How the Other Half Live

Series 2 Episode 1
First Broadcast: Thu 8 April 2010

The first episode of the second series explores rural poverty and the financial difficulties that people can still find themselves in regardless of education and hard work. It is also about a friendship between two eight-year-old girls from opposite sides of the economic divide.

Rebecca Abingdon lives with her dad David, mum Angie and brother George in the chocolate box Cotswold countryside. David is the MD of a marketing business, and a multi-millionaire.

He's come a long way since his impoverished childhood in Birmingham: something he doesn't think his children fully understand, having grown up in a house with more than 30 rooms, attending an exclusive private school and living 'in a bubble'. As Rebecca says, 'poverty happens in London and big cities. I don't think there is much poverty around here though.'

Just 11 miles away eight-year-old Iris has a very different life. Iris's mum Cal spent 18 years living in a new age travelling community, but when she was pregnant, Cal made a life-changing decision to study law. She achieved a first class hons, a masters with distinction and completed her bar exams while mostly living in a trailer and bringing up Iris on her own.

But, despite being called to the bar, she hasn't found a chambers willing to take her on for her pupilage: an essential apprenticeship that Cal must complete before she is a qualified barrister. The only thing she has to show for eight years of study is £20,000 of debt. Instead Cal works part-time in Ladbrokes, earning £400 per month. Every day Cal and Iris are aware of every single penny, the phone rings on a regular basis with calls from the debt collectors and they run out of fuel in the harshest winter for 20 years.

What impact will the relationship between the families have on the children? Can David help Cal secure the pupilage she so desperately craves? And can the Abingdons help Cal and Iris get out of poverty for good, or will they see that money can't solve everything?

    1. How the Other Half Live Series 2 Episode 4 How the Other Half Live: One Year On

      This episode catches up with two families from the first series and the extraordinary story that unfolded following the…

      • This programme has episodes with subtitles available.

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