If you like surreal comedy like Black Books, Spaced and Father Ted, then see if you can track down Green Wing (plenty of clips on YouTube).
A police series that I don’t think has been mentioned is Unforgotten, starring Nicola Walker, who is also worth seeing in Last Tango in Halifax and The Split. From cop to farmer to upmarket divorce lawyer - there’s versatile (though, come to think of it, in all of them there’s a ground bass of stroppy daughter).
If you can get hold of it somehow I suggest The League of Gentlemen. Macabre humor but good.
There’s multiple types of brit stuff, some of which is mutually exclusive. I will expect someone who loves classic traditional comedy to hate some modern alternative comedy.
There’s classic stuff, which probably hits as late as early 90s
Inside there is two kinds, traditional and alternative
Inside there is comedy and drama
For classic traditional comedy, you’ve got Dads Army, Are you being Served, Allo Allo, Hi De Hi. Few of these will make me laugh, they’re stuck in a time before I was born. Some are properly ropey, but Americans often love them. Tend to get the oldies in the UK loving them.
Classic alternative comedy would be likes of the Young Ones, I’d even say Monty Python, and Fawlty Towers in here. Bottom. French and Saunders. A bit of fry and laurie. Alexi Sayle’s stuff. The comic strip presents (my favourite out of these, a parody series covering many films and TV). These often spread into modern, and their influences.
The distinction between classic and alternative drama is a finer line. Lots of drama from the 80s, a lot of Dickens and Austin, I’d even say some go into modern (New trick for instance on traditional). Minder, The sweeney.
Then there’s modern.
Modern traditional comedy is few and far between. It went out of fashion. Tends to be lower quality, misplaced jokes, Thin Blue Line, Mrs Browns Boys (I think this is, but I can’t bear to watch it), My hero, My family, Miranda.
Whereas Modern alternative became the mainstream, going from Men Behaving Badly (a classic americans often have missed), The Day Today, Partridge, Fist of Fun, through Father Ted, IT Crowd, Black Books, Fleabag, and loads of others. If you like these you tend not to like the classic traditional comedies. They are the opposite, sweary, sometimes offensive.
Modern dramas, well, traditional ones have come back in fashion, such as Downton Abbey and a few others. It’s arguable as to whether there is an alternative type, even the good modern ones are in a traditional “cop or coroner investigating a crime” so the distinction is how dark they are. Line of Duty, Broadchurch, Killing Eve, but goes back a long time to long series.
I enjoy Silent Witness. This is one of those shows that got better by subtraction, I found Dr. Sam Ryan to be insufferable and it was more watchable after she left. It can be gruesome at times with the dead bodies but the slowly evolving and twisting plot lines can be riveting.
Nobody does mysteries as well as the Brits. Sherlock, Midsommer, and Poirot have already been mentioned, but I absolutely loved the understated mood and pacing of Shetland. I like how it’s not filled with explosions and cops shouting all the time.
I’ve recently started watching this. It’s good, but it’s tough to play along. It’s a hard quiz to begin with, and for an American it’s even harder because a lot of the clues are very specific to British culture. Things like “Cricket captains” and “Service stations on the M1 motorway.”
The Tunnel was good as well. It’s an adaption of a Scandinavian show called The Bridge.
and
Derek Jacobi
Yes.
Current host John Humphries has just resigned/quit/retired/whatever and a new replacement
has been inaugurated. (Clive Myrie)
There’s also a “celebrity” version.
Part of that is the different broadcast format; US shows, until the recent cable TV awakening, have long held to a standard 22 episode season. In effect ,they show new shows for half the year, and then re-runs of those episodes the next year.
British TV has no such cyclical concept, and will basically show a run of a show (a “series’”) which may be 5 episodes, or may be many more. Some shows keep coming back (Dr. Who, for example), but even there, it’s not a calendar-year thing. For example, we’re about to have Series 13 of Dr Who, but it’s been back on the air as a reboot since 2005. 16 calendar years, 12 seasons thus far.
It would be nice to get the overview as to why this is. This puts a template of roughly 20-26 shows onto any series be them drama or comedy.
From what I gather, most are:
This is peculiar to the US. The UK doesn’t do this. So the amount tends to be what is comissioned.
When watching US shows in the UK., we’ve synced these by starting them later in the year, and then catching up the gaps, and showing them weekly. Sometimes they run out about March, and wait a few weeks for more. But thus Brits are more prone to the big spoilers which were ruined by the internet.
When I lived in England my favorite shows were Agatha Christie’s Poirot, Tales of the Unexpected and Chucklevision
I’m sure everyone is familiar with the little Belgian detective. There have been good films on the most famous stories but the TV show covered a length of two decades and every story written by Christie whether it was the one of the most famous detective novels of all time or a much more obscure short story. If Sean Connery is considered the true James Bond then David Suchet is the true Hercule Poirot.
The second show was an anthropology kind of program that brought creepy and sinister stories to life. Roald Dahl used to introduce the program initially. The intro theme was really creepy but memorable.
The third show was two real life brothers who were famous for old-fashioned vaudeville slapstick comedy. It was great family entertainment with storylines that were really fun.
Which brings us neatly to Cabin Pressure.
Yes, it’s radio, but it’s probably the best radio sitcom since Hitchhikers. It stars Benedict Cumberbatch, Roger Allam, John Finnemore (who wrote the series) and Stephanie Cole as the operators of a one-plane airline. The episodes are in alphabetical order (more or less) and there is a long story arc from “Abu Dhabi” to the two-part “Zurich” finale. Very highly recommended - to quote Finnemore’s character, it’s “brilliant!”.
And the complete series (“Cabin Pressure A-Z”) is available on CD (remember CDs?).
If it hasn’t already been mentioned upthread, there was a series called Wild Bill with Rob Lowe as a transplanted police chief from the US. Unfortunately it looks like it was cancelled after only one season (6 episodes).
I read someplace that, traditionally, the new television season began in September because that’s when the automakers introduced their new models. And you’re right that they don’t air new episodes on holidays, presumably because people are doing other stuff. I think that’s also why they don’t show new episodes in the summer.
The sweeps thing is that during four months in the year (November, February, May and July), Nielsen collected data nationwide on which shows people were watching.
And I think older shows had more episodes in each season. The Andy Griffith Show, for example, had at least thirty in each season.
I think in a previous thread someone pointed out that for UK shows, usually one person writes all of the episodes in a series (which is what they call a season in the UK) of a programme and that’s one reason there are fewer episodes.
Another thumbs up here for New Tricks and Broadchurch. New Tricks, btw, apparently runs 12 seasons but there’s only about six episodes per season.
I’ve also enjoyed detective series from Iceland and the Scandinavian countries. Somehow I feel a little smarter watching shows that generally don’t depend on shootouts for resolution.
In addition, the old-line “big three” networks traditionally ran a lot of special programming in the weeks before Christmas – animated holiday stuff for kids, musical variety shows, etc. – which would pre-empt the normal programming.
Just for clarity: Nielsen conducts TV ratings research every day of the year, on a national basis. During the sweeps periods, they do more detailed research, among more households, which allows them to get more specific information in each TV market. So, during sweeps, the networks tend to want to run first-run episodes, to ensure their best shot at good ratings.
I’m sure all us Anglophiles are going to kick ourselves for waiting almost 60 posts to mention this, but if you like British mysteries (especially about Sherlock Holmes) and you have Britbox, you will definitely want to see the Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett. IMHO he’s the best Holmes ever, and usually when we talk about it on the SDMB he comes out on top.
The four series can be found under The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
As I remember, they also ran big stuff, like miniseries such as Roots, during sweeps months.
BTW, I love BritBox. Tons of great series to choose from. The UK version of Life on Mars was far superior to the US version. My only complaints are that they don’t have Doc Martin and they pulled all but the newest seasons of Midsomer Murders.