Collapsing health and transport systems. Rudeness and illiteracy wherever you look. A grey, dismal uniformity, with glamour provided by such dim-bulb celebrities as Posh and Becks.
And, above all, the shrivelled self-esteem that comes from loss of global status. As Britain becomes a sadder - if not wiser - place, the box in the corner of the living-room beckons enticingly: "Welcome to our world, where villains usually have a heart of gold, where disputes can be settled with an honest fistfight, where love and support is, eventually, total. Where no problem is so great that it can't be solved over a pint in the Rovers. Forget your troubles; you are among friends now. Welcome to Coronation Street."
For all its self-lauded gritty honesty, Coronation Street is actually as far from today's British reality as Kansas is from the Land of Oz. It is a nostalgic mixture of the lost and the never-was and, as it celebrates its 40th birthday, it's interesting to consider the impact it first made in December, 1960.
"The programme is doomed, with its dreary signature tune and grim scenes of a row of terraced houses and smoking chimneys." Ken Irwin, who reviewed the first episode of Coronation Street for the Daily Mirror, subsequently ate his words. But his was not a universal initial judgment; the Guardian TV critic predicted the series would "run forever".
It may now seem like forever, but when the first episode was broadcast live from the Granada studios, few imagined that it would become the world's longest running and most successful fictional TV series.
This week, as the flurry to celebrate what the Guinness Book of Classic British TV describes as "the most important television series ever made", Corrie sticks with tried and true plotlines - indeed, the stuff of all drama: relationships, infidelity, births, marriages and deaths; bad guys, feuds and sworn enemies. (It's been said that if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing soap opera.)
In a street that in some ways is unrecognisable from the black and white setting of what was originally to be called Florizel Street, it is comforting that the old reliables never change: Jack and Vera struggle with the return of their wayward son, Terry; Liz and Jim re-marry in prison; Deirdre and Ken (yawn) are back together. There's a new baby on the way.
Yet today the terraced street also has (a few) black and Asian characters; a 14-year-old has a baby; Hayley, a (well-loved) transsexual, is seeking to adopt a child; and Rita, one of the older residents, is having an adulterous relationship with a man whose wife has Alzheimer's. Annie Walker, custodian of the Rovers and guardian of the Street's morals, would shiver in her grave.
The Street has resonances not just for viewers of all classes in London or Edinburgh, but also New Zealand or Canada. And Ireland, of course. Consistently featuring several times in our weekly ratings, Corrie has a place in Irish hearts and the archetypes therein are as recognisable to an insurance saleswoman in Cork or a farmer in Leitrim as they are to a market-trader in Salford, which is said to be the real Weatherfield.
Perhaps part of it is the Irish predilection for knowing a body's seed, breed and generation. We have grown up on it, know the characters like neighbours, have shared the heartbreak and the hilarity. If the location is particular, it is the strength of characterisation that brings a degree of universality. The plot currency it deals in is classical: love, sex and death. And conflict.
Given the heightened reality of the plots, one of Coronation Street's greatest virtues is that it presents working-class life in a completely unpatronising way. That said, however, the main paradox of the show is that while the characters are mostly intensely realistic and skillfully written and played, the plotlines can be preposterous and, unlike the messiness of real life, everything about Corrie is eventually reassuring and comforting, despite the traumas that have gone before.
When the 23-year-old Tony Warren first looked at "the driving forces behind life in a working-class street in the north of England" and set out "to examine a community of this kind and to entertain", he was working on themes similar to those of contemporary British theatre and cinema - Look Back in Anger and Room at the Top - but what he was doing hadn't been attempted on TV before.
With the first producer, Stuart Latham, he built a group of realistic, ordinary characters, with a cast drawn from obscure north-west repertory theatre or working mens' clubs to create an ensemble: Annie Walker, Ena Sharples, Elsie Tanner, Elsie's tearaway son, the Barlows.
Added to the mix were the corner-shop owner, bashful Emily, hard man Len Fairclough. Along the way it picked up such magical characters as Hilda and Stan Ogden and their binman lodger, Eddie; Cockney business shark Mike; unlucky and endearing Jack and Vera; holier-than-thou Ivy; busty blonde barmaid Bet Lynch; the brawling Battersbys. Lots of strong women, daft men and the odd "bad lad". It deftly caught the look and language of late 1950s Britain when it started, and, occasionally jogging to keep up, its surface has reflected the changing nature of northern England.
The humour, a defining characteristic, has been evident from early days, with gentle or blackly funny situations emerging organically. Among the most memorable humorous characters of recent years have been the ditzy Raquel, eccentric supermarket manager Reg Holdsworth, cosy double-act Mavis and Derek, foghorn-voiced butcher Fred Elliott, snoopy and fastidious Norris Cole.
But although these characters are comic, they are also well-rounded. Hilda and Stan made us laugh, then touched our hearts - who could have remained unmoved at Hilda's desolation when her feckless husband died?
Coronation Street pulls back the lace curtains on a version of reality, creating an affectionate picture of a community, composed of characters with whom its audience is so familiar that when Deirdre was wrongfully jailed in 1998 for fraud, her campaign enveloped Tony Blair and the House of Commons. Think about it: Britain's prime minister cynically caressing his people by campaigning to free a fictional character from a non-existent prison.
He was capitalising on something else that happened along the way. Probably around the time of the Ken-Deirdre-Mike affair in the early 1980s, and reflecting a late 20th-century fascination with celebrity, the tabloids started to become obsessed by soaps - both plotlines and the private lives of the stars. In an increasingly fractured world, where people interact on computer screens and live more isolated, TV-obsessed lives, has soap opera replaced the reality of community for many people?
The Street has grown larger over the years, with a new row of houses and more shops. And a bigger cast to feed the increasing frequency of episodes. The production is occasionally ropier under the pressure to produce, produce. People sometimes behave out of character.
The plots have become racier - only a half-step behind the times - while the series retains its essentially old-fashioned sensibility. Characters come and go - only Ken remains from the first episode, and just a handful from the early days.
The longevity of the series is the real star, with undulating plotlines and never a resolution to the dramatic loop. In many ways, the Street is too nostalgia-tinged, even with its grittier storylines; it is in its endless continuity that Corrie is most realistic.
In 2000, the appeal of character and narrative is as strong as ever, and the most popular flowering of that is in soap opera. Corrie is hardly perfect but its appeal transcends class, sex, age and nationality. It is watched by millions, in 25 countries. With nearly 5,000 episodes under the belt, they've pulled out all the stops for this 40th anniversary, with documentaries, celebrity endorsements and, on Friday, a screening of the first programme, as well as a return to its live roots with a live, hour-long episode. Makes you wonder how they'll top it for the 50th. And whether Ken Barlow will still be around.
Offficial website: www.coronationstreet.co.uk
Dictionary of the Language of Coronation Street: www.home.echo-on.net
Coronation Street chat room: www.stormloader.com
Coronation Street Almanac: http://members.tripod.co.uk/meritboard/
Did you know?
How many . . . ?
Viewers: average 17 million
Countries: 25, including Sierra Leone and Sri Lanka
Episodes: almost 5,000
Characters: more than 3,500
Births: 25
Deaths: 82
Weddings: 51
Famous faces:
Joanna Lumley
Ben Kingsley
Joanne Whalley-Kilmer
Anna Friel
Mel B