TikTok star Shabaz Ali makes TV debut with BBC Three doc investigating billionaires

The BBC has teamed up with content creator Shabaz Ali to ask if billionaires are bad in a new factual commission for BBC Three and iPlayer.

Shabaz Ali

Shabaz Asks: Are Billionaires Bad? (1×60′) comes from Brighton-based indie Hello Mary and was commissioned by Kalpna Patel-Knight, head of entertainment commissioning, and Nasfim Haque, head of content for BBC Three.

Ali, better known to his four million-plus followers as ShabazSays for his online comedy content on wealth inequality, celebrity and culture, will front the film exploring the heated and nuanced debate around wealth disparity.

Ali, who has a background as a chemistry teacher in Blackburn in the north of England, has kicked off the project with a callout on social media for an interview with a billionaire, to try to understand what life is like for the super wealthy and whether they are as bad as some might think.

The executive producers for Hello Mary are Steven Regan and Paul Hughes and the director is Ahmed Peerbux. Ruby Kuraishe is the BBC commissioning editor.

The show comes as BBC coverage in the last few years has highlighted how younger generations are more likely to experience financial hardship than their parents, citing factors like stagnant wages and rising housing costs. Many young people also support policies such as wealth taxes to address growing economic divides.

Ali said: “I’ve always looked at my social media content as only one way to approach important subjects. I’m interested in digging deeper into the issues of inequality, community and our comparative culture, and a film offers the most exciting opportunity yet to ask questions about our culture: whether it is broken or whether we just need to update our perspective.

“There is no format quite like television in which to do that. I am super nervous, but I’m super excited to be working with the BBC to make a film that will explore the burning question ‘are billionaires bad?’ It’s going to be interesting to leave all the filming, editing, producing to someone else, since it’s always been just me doing it all for my online videos, but TV is something I have always wanted to do and this is going to be very fun.”