Some critics think we can only 'sing convincingly to a choir that's already been convinced." Is that fair? Nick Fraser, one our Executive Producers, responds...

In general, we've had a very positive response. You can see some of the best here. But not everyone is impressed. Last week, AA Gill, writing in the British Sunday Times, took a sceptical view of Why Poverty? (The article is here but behind a pay wall so you may not be able to see it).

Nick answers back...

"A.A. Gill thinks that all our films come from a predictably ideological, simple-minded  position:'poor is bad and rich is to blame.' He wants to to show 'the argument for capitalism'  which turns out to be that that there must be winners and losers, as well as something known as 'fiscal hierarchies.'

I'm not sure that, outside the followers of Ayn Rand, arguments like these are taken seriously. No-one really believes that crumbs or trickledowns work. (Yes, I hate to tell you, not just people like Sachs and Stiglitz, but most economists. They do believe in growth as a means of ameliorating the lives of the poor, but it's what you do with growth that concerns them most these days.) But A.A. (someone I know and like, I should say here) could be advancing the proposition  that we all need poor people in order to have our own lives rich.

I wonder, too, about all that stuff about 'choirs' already convinced. It's hard to gauge the impact of any piece of journalism, and one discredits journalism most easily by saying (a) that people anyone know what it's saying, or expect it to say something and thus find their expectations reliably reinforced, and (b) that they will only read it or view it because they know what it's going to say. In the Why Poverty? case,Twitter and Facebook seem to reveal the opposite - people are surprised by these films.

Let me suggest something else.

Adrian, you should write us a proposal based on these views - 'fiscal hierarchies', whatever they are, et al. We'll even try to get it made.

Or we can use your propositions to argue the toss. En avant, Adrian. Aux Armes! Show us where you stand!"