Does such a show exist? Either now or in the past.
Right now True Detective has 4 main actors and only Vince Vaughn is US born. The others are 1 from Ireland and 2 from Canada. And a costar is British.
I can’t think of any shows with NO American actors in primary roles, but your point is valid anyway. There are MANY shows these days where much or most of the cast is Non-American.
I think of ***Without a Trace *** in which you had two Australians (Anthony LaPaglia and Poppy Montgomery) and a black Englishwoman (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) in the main cast playing Americans.
The Affair - both leads were Brits. Ruth Wilson was astonishingly good.
98% of the cast of Game of Thrones is from the UK (plus Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) from Denmark, Sibel Kekilli (Shae) from Germany, and Carice van Houten (Melisandre) from Netherlands). Peter Dinklage is the only American in a major role that I can think of, out of like 30+ major characters.
Jason Momoa as Khal Drogo
Rosabell Laurenti Sellers as Tyene Sand
Some extras? Bueller?
Plenty of Irish actors as well. It also seems to have a dearth of Canadian and AU/NZ actors.
ETA: I know you only want TV shows but I was amused that the cast of Horns was mostly British.
I remember someone asking why almost all the bad guys in Star Wars had British accents. The answer was it was filmed there.
That doesn’t explain Carrie Fisher, though…
Fisher had a British accent? News to me.
It kind of came and went. (Listen to her first few scenes as Leia, sometime.)
True Blood had British, Australian, and New Zealand.
The Walking Dead have an awful lot of Brits!
Reign. One of my favo(u)rite shows ever. The top roles are all Australian, British, Canadian. I’m not sure if they even have any Americans in any significant roles.
Adelaide Kane—Australian
Caitlin Stasey (swoon!)—Australian
Anna Popplewell—English
Celina Sinden—English
Jenessa Grant—Canadian
Toby Regbo—English
Megan Follows—Canadian
Torrance Coombs—Canadian
Sean Teale—English
Yael Grobglas—Israeli
Craig Parker—New Zealand
Rose Williams—English
Rachel Skarsten—English
I know some of the shows mentioned are “American” but Game of Thrones and Reign don’t take place here, so Im not sure why viewers would be surprised so much of the cast is not from here.
The Wire doesn’t qualify but it does star 3 non-American actors, a bit remarkable considering it takes place in inner city Baltimore:
Dominic West (McNulty)- British
Idris Elba (Stringer Bell)—British
Aiden Gillen (Carcetti aka Littlefinger in GOT)— Irish
I can think of three----Andrew Lincoln, the Gov and Lenny James. Michone (sp) was born in USA but parents are from Zimbabwe.
Lauren Cohan was born in the U.S. but moved to the U.K. while still a child.
Good pull by you.
The Equalizer. Edward Woodward was the only regular. He was British, but played an American.
cos it’s $hundreds of millions of HBO, aimed at firstly a US cable market.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents had only one regular, IIRC…
Going back a few years, the Showtime series ***Brotherhood *** was about two brothers in Providence, Rhode Island. One is supposed to be a mobster and the other is supposed to be an honest politician.
The bad brother was played by Jason Isaacs, an Englishman. The good brother was played by Jason Clarke, an Australian.
There were several English and Scottish actors among the tough guy “American” bikers in Sons of Anarchy- most notably Charlie Hunnam and Tommy Flanagan.