Brit TV show recommendations
 

Ok I've seen all of the Sherlocks to date, Man Stroke Woman, both seasons, Green Wing both seasons and the special, I'm all caught up with Utopia.

What else is there that's really good? My sister sent me Black Books, but I didn't care for it. It was season 3 if that makes a diff.

craving

Excellent sketch show: Smack the Pony ( from some of the same team as Green Wing).

Nathan Barley: a short run comedy about the the rise of the idiots - by Charlie Brooker.

No heroics: only did a single series of 6 eps. No idea why...awesome show.

Misfits: brilliant, several series available


Also: please, please tell me you've seen Garth Merengi's Dark Place....

This is from the dvd extras



The Fades: was excellent, but was;t picked up for a second series. Inexplicable except on the grounds of budget constraints in the wake of BBC cutbacks

Ripper Street: co-production between BBC and BBC America - police procedural and mystery but joyfully anchored in a lawless , almost wild west style, Victorian London.




Mighty Boosh - you'll either love it or hate it.

Wow. What a home work assignment!

I watched the first bit of your clip and I thought it was very funny, the black guy made it seem like a comedy. I'll put that first.

Thanks D.

The League of Gentlemen of course. But like Boosh, it occupies its own place and isn't necessarily everyone's cup of tea.

I adored Black Books so I might not be the best advisor...

Misfits definitely though. Until Utopia came along it was my favouritist, sweariest, goriest show. Curtis is the most boring character, but with stand-outs like Lauren, Nathan and Rudy it's easy to see why.

Charlie Brooker made a marvellous one-off (well, five eps) called Dead Set. Zombies plus Big Brother. May not translate that well - BB is still massive over here, which adds to the horror aspect.

Oh and maybe try some Derren Brown. If you catch An Evening of Wonders you might see a stunningly attractive young lady in the audience, with peroxide blonde hair. Derren correctly guessed she bought her dress from eBay. And also advised her to get a cat. Bad Derren - that didn'r work out well.

On Garth Marenghi's Darkplace:

Ayoade, who plays Dean Lerner alsoplayed Mos in The IT Crowd.


They made a nice website for Marenghi:

http://www.garthmarenghi.com/

Darkplace blew me away at the time. It was out of its time, if ya get me.
A true original.

No idea it was co-created by Richard Ayoade. But then I had no idea who he was at that time. He really came into his own in the IT Crowd for me, as did Chris O'Dowd. Blimey - where did I watch those? Somewhere I had free access to the TV obviously, I can't remember anyone else ever having them on their radar.

Have you watched Shameless, foot? I've enjoyed that one a lot.

Get out? Derren Brown? I have a ton of his stuff. I think I saw Evening of Wonders. I'll have to check it again.

My sis sent me season 3 of Black Books but I didn't take to it. I didn't realize Tamsin Greig was in it. I thought she looked familiar in Green Wing.

Check it, I had the show and never watched it! Here you are, almost famous.

Who's the bloke next to you?

Chap next to me was my housemate.
I like that pic, you chose a flattering one, thanks!

This is an example of how you have to read all the threads, or you'll miss something.

That's really cool Sundae! And thanks for getting the screen grab, foots!

Wow!

Of course, if foot really loved us he'd rip the video clip...

Wait, WHAT? That's awesome. I missed all that too.

That's a great picture!

I would except when I upgraded to CS6 I found I lost my video editing ability since it requires 64 bit processing. I plan to reinstall CS4 anyway. They changed the whole look of everything and now I can't find shit.

I really hate that about software developers. If you want to add new features fine, Why change the look of the skin? It's not a fucking shirt or car. Leave the buttons where they were, or allow a choice of skins.

I don't have a sig quote for Utopia this week.
Blame work/ not working issues.
Might have to watch it again to get one.

LAST EPISODE ON TUESDAY OMG!

Foot, have you tried our standard sitcoms?
Benidorm is good. First two series at least. Helps that Pemby is in it. In shorts.
The Royle Family (am not a fan but many are)
Spaced of course. But I have said that over and over in so many different threads you'd think I was on a retainer. Also not all that standard.

How bout Funland? Snatched my heart away.
Blackpool (town where Funland is set) more musical, David Tennant and Steve Pemberton but lacks Mark Gatiss' naked arse - none of which probably bother a hetero male.

BTW Andy Nyman, who co-writes and co-creates Derren Brown's shows has his fingers in a lot of other pies I gorge on. May be singing to the choir here.

Co-wrote and starred in Ghost Stories (fan-gurl review by me), appear briefly in TLoG, and in Dead Set. Worked with Gatiss on Crooked House - oh! another one for you! The lovely Mr Gatiss' husband is one of the chief actors (Ian Hallard).

Nyman is a skilfull worker of words, and plays sleazy very easily. Am uber-fan. But my biased opinion is that it's worth checking out everything with his name on it. If you think it's pants then you haven't lost anything but a few minutes. And I will repay those in heaven.

Love Nyman.

watched the first ep of Shameless UK last night. Pretty good.

something's turned up too far. I found that everlasting trainwreck hypnotizing. I could not turn away. I WANTED TO, but I could not. I was helpless.

Please continue, you'll not be sorry.

Cherry-that pic of you is GREAT!

The US version of Shameless is pretty funny and effed up. My sister, my OWN sister, insinuated that I needed a less squared away guy- like FRANK in my life.

chuh. He'd make me look like a positive angel, he would.

Finished the first season of Shameless and I liked it, in one way I can see how it could go on for 8 seasons where Green Wing only went two. But in another way I wish Green Wing could have gone on a bit longer. I guess there's only so much coal in a seam...

I didn't really take to Campus, it seemed like a less coherent version of GW. I watched a few eps of No Heroics and felt it didn't really get off the ground, I liked Nicholas Burns a lot in Man/Woman, but found his character in NH too painful to watch. It seemed like this show could only go so far before it used up all its possible jokes.
Really liking Smack the Pony.

I didn't like Campus. Nice idea, going for that improv style again, but just didn;t work at all.

You might want to check out Big Train as well. Some of the same people as in Green Wing and Spaced and a few other shows. Very funny sketch show.

And Jam...which is sometimes very funny, and sometimes weirdly unsettling. With many of the same people from Big Train and Green Wing, from Chris Morris the guy who made Brass Eye...another must see British series from the 90s.

Oh thanks so much! I saw that sketch years ago and didn't know where it was from. I love that one.

Sundae - wow, you look great in that pic.

I've just finished watching all 3 seasons of Downton Abbey. I'm thoroughly hooked. I am convinced Brits have the best TV series

No way man. We have two or three contenders for seriously good tv series at any one time. That's aboutit. Taken across any decade we've usually contributed a handful of kickass tv shows to the world.

America makes so much more television than us, so there's a fuck of a lot of bad tv, but there's also a lot of really great tv too.

You don't generally get to see the really shit Brit tv, you only get the highlights :P

In this thread recommending Brit tv, other than Utopia and Black Mirror, most of the recommendations are for old shows, most from the 90s and early 00s.

When we do it well, we do it very well. And it used to be that BBC and Channel 4 dramas in particular were much better than their American equivalent, but that started changing about 10-15 years ago with the rise of HBO and the other cale channels. Moving to a subscription model freed up thiose channels to make truly magnificent television without being held hostage to advertisers' sensibilities. Now they are absolutely setting the tone and the BBC and Channel 4 are lagging way behind.

That said: you might want to check our Ripper Street, Sarge. I think you might like it. The characters are wonderfully drawn and the period details are lovely. There's a brilliant character called Drake, a former soldier now a police sergeant.

I think it's my favourite tv show right now. My favourite group of characters. It has a nice buddy feel to it. The central trio of Inspector Reid, his sergeant Drake, and an American doctor, formerly a Pinkerton, now living in Whitechapel in a brothel run by his sometime lover (wife? not sure yet) Long Susan, bounce off each other well.

Whitechapel is better.
Just because of the cast :rolleyes:

I agree with Dani, though.
Often, our written/ radio reviews are all about the excellent drama shows coming out of the US, and how we can never compete with the budgets (true) or the stellar cast (well - an opinion based on movies I think.) Certainly some American TV is held in extremely high esteem here. Because it's only worth buying in the best.

Grass is always greener and all that.

Being proud of my country I do think we squeeze out an extraordinary amount of talent for a small island. But of course the huge help is that we speak the same language (albeit with regional variations.)

Yes I prefer British comedy than American, but I think that's a matter of immersion. And there are comedies on both sides of the Atlantic that would send me stark staring mad if I had to watch them non-stop. And they're ratings winners. Sigh.

hehehe. Let's face it though, Pembers could star in a 4 hour drama about watching paint dry and you'd be glued to you telly :p

Not that I am equating Whitechapel with watching paint dry. I never got into it when it was on. Watched some of it but it didn't draw me in like Ripper Street does. I might give it another go when RS has finished. Jump forward to the modern era in the same place. A lot of critics are talking about how the two series work well as companions, bookending the Ripper killings so to speak.

Funnily enough I watched Yule Never Leave (Sky+ off GOLD) the other night, just to spot Jeremy Dyson's cameos. And see the lovely Mark Gatiss in his adonis wig.

But yes, I have a 3 DVD box set of Animals at Work (CBBC) just because it's hosted by JB. Kept meaning to donate it to the out of school club, but I'd only have been offended if someone switched it off for yet another Disney film...

I'm a loyal stalker.

Pining for Fiona and Maxine...

Foot, if you're looking for more sketch comedy I highly recommend "That Mitchell and Webb Look."

Sketch comedy will only get me so far. I'm really looking for a threesome with Maxine and Fiona.

Brit tv gave us the Doctor. Then there is the James Bond movie franchise. That pretty well wraps up all debate on quality of programing.

Dana - I started watching Ripper Street (on demand). This looks like another enjoyable diversion.

Have you seen The Thick of It, foots?

It's fucking awesome. Though, you might need to google odd details of the Brit political scene it shouldn't be any harder to understand than West Wing was for Brits.

Note: Malcolm is a political fixer/press manager/enforcer for their party. At this point their party is in power. But it's looking inevitable that they're going to lose the next election (they're the Labour Party just before the current tory/lib dem coalition came into power) The ex-girlfriend Malcolm wants Ollie to get back in with works for the opposite party.


None of this is sfw language wise.



Couple more clips:






A view from the other side: this is one of the coalition parties now in power:

Incidentally, the sort-of-sketch show Jam, originally began life as a radio show. A strange mix of monologues, music and sketches.

Here's the first episode, minus the music sections (opening monologue is about 7 mins):



Here's how it translates to the screen:

The first sketch after the intro has the guy who played Dr Statham(?) in GW; also, the skit on 'symptomless coma' around 7:40 is hysterical:

Like Winamp.

dana, you once touted a brit tv show about .. hm. outsiders? outlast? outcast? I don't remember...

the upshot was that there was some problem with spirits of some dead people that prevented them from "moving on" or somesuch. I watched the first couple episodes, they were great. There are a few people in the story that can move these lost souls along, but there's danger. One of them is endangered in the early part of the story... I just can't remember the rest but I did like what I saw.

What was it that I saw? Please?

The Fades :P

Alas it never got picked up for a second series, because BBC Three has had to reduce its original drama productions from 3 per year to 1.

Ah, that's it. Thank you.

:)

thick of it, fave scene. There's that Scottish guy from Utopia.

Just started on Monday night, an 8 part crime drama: Broadchurch

The first part was excellent!

Stars David Tennant amongst others:)

Foots: have you come across Chelmsford 123 at all in your foray into Brit TV? It ran for two series: one in 1988 and another in 1990. It's one of my all time favourite shows. I was gutted when it only ran for two series. But ya know...not untypical for Brit tv :p

From wiki:


Here's the first ep: apols for the picture quality it's old :p

writhing in anticipation for part 3 tonight. It's funny, I'm starting to recognize a lot of Brit actors from Greenwing, Smack the Pony, and other shows. I keep seeing Olivia Coleman and I'm really impressed at her range.

I just power disked through House of Cards and noted the huge disparity between British story writing and US story writing. It would be a fascinating study to compare the cultural and economic forces that shape TV in each of our countries.

The feeling I get from American TV is the heavy reliance on the cliffhanger ending to entice the viewer to tune in next week. This goes on and on with no end ever in sight. It's why I won't bother tuning in the the next season of House of cards.

The feeling I get from British TV is that there is a story and it is divided into 5 parts. My desire to tune in next week is driven by good writing and story telling, not cliffhangers. Sure, in Broadchurch there's more to be learned but there seems to be a larger story arc at play and not just and endless series of rises and falls like a moebius roller coaster.

I suspect there may be a certain freedom that show writers have at the BBC that the writers in this country don't have, vis a vis corporate masters. I don't really understand the economics of British TV though.

Broadchurch is actually an ITV production. Independant terrestrial (network?) commercial channel. But there's a lot of cross over in terms of the production companies they use and in terms of casting as well.

ITV and Sky have both really upped their game producing good tv in the commercial sector (Sky = subscription satellite channels). The BBC is hit and miss, but its unique place within the market means it can fail from time to time and continue to produce and to take chances. The commercial channels have had to really push the boundaries in order to carve a place.

Btw: did you see the original British House of Cards? I haven't watched the remake yet, but looking forward to it. I loved the original. In case you haven't, here's a clip:

I'll have to give it a look. I like the actors in the US version and certainly understand a lot more of the political machinations but I'd be surprised if your version weren't better. Just like the office.

What isn't made better with an English, Scottish, or Irish accent?

It's an oldie, but did you ever watch I Claudius?

They've been rerunning them recently. Real classic.

If you havent seen it, here's the first few mins of the opening episode. Don't be fooled by the gentle lead in. This is a dark drama, full of the viciousness of imperial gameplaying. But it takes its time to build. I've often thought there's something about Game of Thrones puts me in mind of I Claudius. Something in the stately pace and grand game of it. Of course, it's a BBC drama from before BBC dramas had anything approaching a budget. I would love to see it done with today's production values, but with the original lead actors (as they were ...not as they are - and you can recast a lot of the smaller roles ;P)




[probably should say nsfw because of the bare breasted dancing girls about 5 mins in...]

I watched some of it it originally - I think.
In the days before things were repeated and you had to record on videotapes - which your Dad taped over with Match of the Day to your chagrin.

I read the books - I, Claudius, and Claudius the God because they were written by Robert "Goodbye to All That" Graves. Books is always better of course.

But I'd quite like to watch it again now.
I will do searching things.

Oh, ETA - I had a wonderful History teacher. He brought every era he taught to life. Inc Claudius' Empire.
Man should have had his own TV show - he never dumbed down but I remember pretty much all of what he taught us (except the dates.) I took History for GCSE purely based on the joy of his lessons.

Got a different teacher, but had a schoolgirl crush on her anyway.
Got an A.
Of course.

I think all or most are available as full episodes on Youtube.

An electric clip:

I Claudius is amazing. Stellar cast.

I'm in one of those youtubey moods :p

I know I've posted about this before, but a long time ago. Have you ever seen Ideal? The Johnny Vegas sitcom. I think it's one of the funniest British shows in recent years. dark at times. And odd. Actually, odd at times during the first series and then increasingly odd, until the final series or two were downright bizarre.

Here's a couple of clips off've the toob:

My wife and I watched I Claudius on PBS soooo many years ago.
For years, I thought Derek Jocobi really did have that speech
impediment, and was only able to overcome it by acting !

It was a wonderful series.
Unfortunately the following series of Caligula failed to maintain the standard.

It was almost certainly on when it first aired, but I was too young to notice the first run. When it was repeated three or four years later it was something we watched as a family.

Just finished watching all 8 series of Foyle's War over the past weeks - enjoyed immensely and hoping for a series 9 - interesting that the tone/tenor/even the look got much darker in series 7 and 8 which makes sense - but is pretty stark contrast to the early series.... still it happened quite seamlessly

I seem to recall the creators recently saying that series 8 would be the last.

Pete's Uncle, a Professor at Gallaudet, told me he did the close caption for that when he saw me reading the book. I haven't seen the series...

heh.. true, but then they said that about series 6 - and then brought it back
(no doubt annoying the living heck out of the writer who'd dropped two series worth of stories in the circular file when told him they would be canning it and had to come up with a whole new story line for after the war)