Media Spotlight Freefall - BBC2 Written & directed by Dominic Savage

20 July 2009 | By Natalie Thomas

They have focussed on the technicalities of the crunch, the millions of pounds banks have lost and the financial institutions that have been brought to their knees.

So it was refreshing to see the BBC come up with a dramatised fictional account of some of the personal tragedies that have unfolded as a result of the financial meltdown.

Freefall, written and directed by Dominic Savage, focussed on Dave, played by Dominic Cooper, a smooth-talking sub-prime mortgage broker who sold people the dream of home ownership - the worse their credit record the better.

The programme opened with a bolshie managing director informing his team of mortgage brokers that lenders are giving money away while handing out lists of consumers with poor credit histories.

Driven by money, Dave sells a mortgage to anyone he can find, including old school friend Jim.

Working as a security guard and living in a small council house, Jim seems content with his life. He has two children, a wife and no mounting debt.

But after some smarmy chat from Dave - including telling Jim’s wife she has “come to bed eyes” - the couple are won over and set off to buy their mock-Tudor three-bed semi.

But Dave has failed to explain the main point of a discounted mortgage - that the rate goes up after a year.

While the money and women are rolling in for Dave, City slicker Gus, played by Aidan Gillen, is busy sipping champagne as he sells vast amounts of bad mortgage debt.

Fast-forward a year and the credit crunch has hit. Jim has lost his job and discovered that his mortgage payments have shot up by £300 a month.

As result he is forced to move out of his new home. When Jim goes to look for Dave to ask for help he finds that he too has lost his job over concerns about the fact he had not asked a number of clients whether they could afford the mortgages he sold them if interest rates were to rocket.

Undoubtedly Freefall was a clichéd account of the global crisis, featuring Dave the flashy salesman, Gus the coke-snorting greedy-guts and Jim the naïve borrower.

But those who have worked in the industry no doubt watched the programme with a lump in their throats, spotting similarities between the characters and people they know.

In a long monologue at the end of the drama Jim’s wife puts the blame for the financial mess they’ve got into squarely on one pair of shoulders - Jim’s. It was his lust for the glitzy house and big sofa that pushed them to take on the debt.

Meanwhile Gus, psychologically broken by the huge losses he has made trading mortgage debt and the collapse of the only lifestyle he can endure, leaps off a bridge.

The only character who gets to the end of the show without troubling with any moral reflection is Dave.

In his mind, he was simply selling a product and indeed, we see him at the end offering a similar sales pitch to middle-class home owners as he sells them solar panels.

Yes, Dave could have been in any sector selling any product because the underlying message of Freefall was that if an opportunity for greed and deceit is created, somebody will always be there to seize it.

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