"Crashing" Setting Norms

If you have been following along, you would know that last week I talked about the importance of setting in an Netflix original. This week though, I would like to address the opposite. In the Netflix original, Crashing, the setting is used almost entirely as a hook for the show, but it is not the focal point.
A British TV show about the mixed personalities of a group of adults meshing together only caught my eye, and many others, at first because it was set in a disused hospital. Without that surprise turn at the end of the summary, it would just sound like a wanna-be Friends reboot. But hearing that every main character is a “property guardian” of a disused hospital is something new. You almost think you are going to get a comedy-horror feel among the dark and dingy rooms, but not quite. It mostly serves as, well, a hook. It catches my attention, but it doesn’t hold my attention like in other TV shows or movies. The relationships and situations that is portrayed between characters could all possibly happen outside this setting, in say a regular apartment complex or a park. Here, the setting isn’t the most important item going on.
The first episode is where we get the most emphasis on the hospital setting. The characters talk about what they can and cannot doing inside the hospital (including smoking, throwing parties, and having overnight guests),  and then continue to do it anyways. That shows how little their situation affects them. At a “forbidden” they throw, some people mention how their seemingly normal coworkers live in an abandoned hospital, but every resident just brushes it off and says they are doing it to save money. There’s only one character that shows any embarrassment for her living situation, and it is the character that is the stereotypical uptight one. She does the justification of saying it is the best way to again, save money, for a wedding. After that, when the setting is directly addressed in the show it is in situationally ironic moments. A shelf in the big room falls right as one of the main characters, Katie, complains that no one fixed the fallen shelf in the bathroom. Above all else, they just really make use of what they can that is left in the hospital, and that mixes in the setting more with the story line. At the same party, a scavenger hunt is played, and the answer to where the prize is hidden is written on x-rays. No one bats an eye.
If any setting in this show really matters, I believe it’s the setting of Britain (specifically, Fitzrovia, in central London) more than the hospital. Where the particulars of living commune-style in a hospital aren’t continuously addressed, we see British culture leaking through all parts of the show. From their restaurants and their hobbies, to their dress and their language. Those parts stick out more, especially as an American viewer, than any other minor detail.