The whims of the super-rich guests at Manhattan’s luxurious Plaza hotel sit uncomfortably with the lives of those who serve them – not least at a time of crisis
I dunno. I dunno. You have to be able to read the room, don’t you? Of course, that is hard to do when you are commissioning and filming months, or even a year and more in advance, in the case of, say, a documentary about the extravagant Christmas festivities laid on at one of the most famously extravagant hotels in the world. And when the post-lockdown cupboard is remarkably bare, I understand that you have not much choice but to show whatever remains therein.
Still, it must be noted that Christmas in New York: Inside the Plaza (Channel 4) sits oddly with the national mood. In an average year, you could get away with an hour of fluffy puffery that narrowly escapes being an actual advertisement for whatever luxurious institution has graciously allowed a highly curated look behind the scenes. In a normal year, we would doubtless have been able to settle down on the sofa with a bucket of Baileys, turn off our minds and enjoy the sights on display at Manhattan’s famous hotel, built in 1907 in the hope of crapping all over the Waldorf-Astoria, which it duly did, becoming a favourite haunt of the Vanderbilts, presidents and Frank Lloyd Wright. We would boggle as the 600-plus staff at the hotel – which has also played host to film stars, the Beatles and Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball – prepare to pamper 21 floors of guests, each paying between £800 and £23,000 a night over the holiday season.
