Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, BBC Four, review Just because you're rich doesn't make you cultured. Just because you're rich doesn't make you refined. Being rich means you're rich," pronounced author and journalist Michael Gross, in Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream (BBC Four) - which was itself based on Gross's best-selling book, 740 Park: the Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building. Gross, it's fair to say, holds some billionaires in pretty low esteem. And this documentary, made for non-profit TV network PBS in America, clearly agreed with him. It presented a former doorman at 740 Park Avenue, who testified to some rich residents" stinginess. Oil magnate David Koch had given only a $50 Christmas tip, and even then it was paid by cheque. But the film's implicit charges against the billionaires went much further, linking them to American ills such as inequality and restricted social mobility. The stated idea was to compare Manhattan's ritzy Park Avenue with another street of the same name in the nearby South Bronx, where deprivation is rife. But after a brief initial visit, the Bronx Park Avenue merited barely a mention. Instead, director Alex Gibney preferred to present a pretty thin retread of some already well-vented resentments in US politics. There was a pie chart showing how income growth in the US since 1978 has accrued entirely to the benefit of the top 10 per cent of earners. Then, the film suggested a link between that money and America's political system (particularly the Republican Party). Paul Ryan, the congressman from Wisconsin who went on to be Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, was reported as taking more money from David Koch and his brother than any other member of the House of Representatives. The film also chronicled David Koch's multimillion-dollar donations to political advocacy groups, one of which supported the Republican governor of the same state, Scott Walker, in his battle against the state's trade unions. Like Michael Moore's similar outings, the result was at least rousing - and not entirely unconvincing. But its shrill complaints offered no solutions, nor even a grown-up analysis of the problems. If billionaires paid more tax, the resulting revenue wouldn't (magically, overnight) improve the life chances of kids in the South Bronx. The film offered no suggestions as to how to do that (which is, of course, the hard part). And the film's demagoguery was, after the US presidential election, woefully out of date. All that right-wing pressure-group money couldn't unseat big-Government Obama - the Republican presidential ticket failed even to carry Wisconsin, where victory for Obama has been credited, in part, to support from trade unions. None of those Park Avenue billionaires will sleep any less soundly after watching this film. As part of a globally-broadcast season of documentaries under the banner "Why Poverty?," it was - if you'll pardon the pun - a poor contribution.