Welcome to Mayfair

The most coveted square on the Monopoly board is a meeting-place of fairy tales and conspicuous consumerism - more concentrated wealth than anywhere else on the planet; 20 Michelin-starred restaurants; nearly 4,000 five-star hotel rooms and the world's most expensive retail outlets. And alongside some of the UK’s most famous institutions - Claridges, Christie’s and the Burlington Arcade – are 1,000 social housing tenants and an army of 80,000 workers who service this exclusive enclave. Welcome to Mayfair.

This Modern Times film reveals a world full of surprise and deep contrasts - from the estate agent selling multi million pound mansions, to the NHS doctor whose patients range from billionaires to people on benefits, and the craftspeople who keep the wealthy in their finery to the small café owners hanging on to their livelihoods by their fingernails. With the global super rich clamouring for an address in Mayfair, it is undergoing one of the biggest changes in its long history – but can Mayfair's unique cocktail of eccentricity, affluence and the everyday survive in the face of the relentless commercialisation of the area?