What began as Jade Franks’ scathing, self-penned monologue about working-class life inside elite Cambridge corridors, Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates X), has snowballed into one of the year’s hottest Fringe discoveries — enough for Netflix to step in and start shaping a TV adaptation.
The project is in early development with Boiling Point filmmaker Philip Barantini and his outfit It’s All Made Up Productions, marking another step in Barantini’s growing creative pipeline with Netflix following “Adolescence.” The plan is for Franks to script the adaptation herself — a smart move, given the play’s appeal lies squarely in her own lived specificity and unfiltered wit.
Eat the Rich (But Maybe Not Me Mates X) follows Jade, a working-class first-year from Liverpool negotiating the disorienting contrasts of Oxbridge life while taking on cleaning shifts to make ends meet. The play’s blend of humour, frustration and clear-eyed observation will ring true to anyone who’s ever found themselves navigating a space not quite built for them. That jolt of perspective — funny, furious, and unvarnished — is exactly what turned the show into a Fringe lightning rod.
Directed by Tatenda Shamiso and produced by JFR Productions, the play stormed its way through August with a string of award wins — Fringe First, Filipa Bragança, Holden Street — and a steady parade of industry scouts squeezed into packed houses. A Soho Theatre run kicks off soon, adding yet another notch to its meteoric rise.
If the series goes ahead, it’ll land in a fertile moment for Fringe-to-screen storytelling. “Baby Reindeer” set the tone last year, morphing from a raw one-man monologue into one of Netflix’s biggest cultural shockwaves. Since then, the streamer has been sweeping up Fringe talent, including Brian Watkins and Julia McDermott’s “Weather Girl,” now in the works with A24 and Team Downey.
“Eat the Rich” certainly feels cut from the same cloth: jagged, personal, and unwilling to soften its critique for comfort. Whether it ultimately reaches series production or not, the attention surrounding it signals a wider appetite for stories that take a scalpel to class, belonging, and the unwritten rules of British life.
