For his last film, "Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone", Adam Curtis "used archive footage and an increasingly abstract editing style" to portray the collapse of the Soviet Union, said Aris Roussinos on UnHerd. It showed political leaders detached from reality, a population that had lost faith in the system, and corrupt oligarchs. His latest series deploys the same techniques to tell the story of the UK from 1979 to the end of the 20th century.
The story that unfolds in "Shifty" is one of national decline, said Chris Bennion in The Daily Telegraph. Its message is that, since the election of Margaret Thatcher, "extreme money" and "hyper-individualism" have destroyed the fabric of British society and left the country "fragmented, atomised and siloed".
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