What it lacks that I suppose Craner misses is a general sense of life as something passionately lived, it's London as viewed through alienated eyes, mediated through an alienated voice, but it does subvert that viewpoint when e.g. "Robinson" asks the narrator if he's surprised the biggest street festival in Europe is in this antisocial city and the narrator replies that 1) only an antisocial city would have room for it and 2) that for many London isn't antisocial at all (juxtaposed with images of Notting hill carnival).
That use of a narrator and a mediator means that it can be both deeply serious (and miserable) about London but also wry and playful. To the extent that I almost wonder if the use of Beethoven over an image of a bonfire night fire is a joke about the pomposity of the narrator or a serious perception of tragic decline and waste in the city -- or both.