British tv shows to stand alongside breaking bad the sopranos etc

The last decade has seen a enormous amount of attention paid to the so called "golden age " of television. This focus has with a few exceptions , entirely ignored the output of the traditional home of "quality television " - Britain. So to all the many British users of this site which shows of the past ten years or so would you measures up to the long shadow cast by the sopranos , breaking bad , the wire etc?

lol

Er, probably none of it.

We inarguably still do the best nature documentaries though.

if the question is sincere then i'd say in brief that the structures of the two nations' industries don't allow for comparable kinds of programming but on the other hand hi Callum glad you could drop by

Why would the question not be sincere? And if anything I would have thought that the large amounts of programming that are made for the government owned broadcaster would have lead to a greater volume of quality content than America could offer. Maybe the free market really is superior...

lolol

make u think

Where is Beatles band?

Good to know that a poorly worded question can still invite such ridicule

standards must be maintained

the structures of the two nations' industries don't allow for comparable kinds of programming

Doctor Who maybe an exception? Exactly the same episode structure as a US cable drama.

http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view/1007079/benny-hill-tennis-o.gif

What standards are those?

lol

real answer to this question:

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01591/alexander_armstron_1591141c.jpg

^^^
OTM

the second series of Heath on the Barrow is underrated. especially when Deputy Chief Constable Nicola Tietjens shows up.

top moments of british tv drama of the last 10 years

#1 moriarty designing an app to steal the crown jewels

#2 gary linekar discovering his ancestors were boring

#3 alan davies leading the audience in a shalamar singalong on QI

I too have often wondered if there were any American dramas being produced in the UK

The Bill: Birmingham was a surprisingly unsuccessful spin off based in Alabama but filmed in the west midlands

It's apples and oranges. Of course there's quality British drama but it doesn't have the budget, prestige or schedule space of the US model so there's no realistic comparison to be made. This is just a bizarre claim: "the large amounts of programming that are made for the government owned broadcaster would have lead to a greater volume of quality content than America could offer". The BBC can't match the money that US cable channels can get from catering to affluent niche audiences. Niche in the US still means millions.

There's very good writer-led drama - Broadchurch, Utopia, The Shadow Line, Southcliffe, The Fall, Accused - but I wouldn't put it up against Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Mr-Bean-Eating-Chicken.gif

damn if only that was blood sausage

Broadchurch turned crap, sorry DL and every other person in the universe

They could have made A Field In England a series, and it'd have been better than all that pompous HBO crap

xp I would concede the point kinder but now whiney's turned up with his tired old lol britishes routine I'm going to have to insist that Broadchurch was a flawless work of art that will live on long after we are all in our graves.

I think there was some great British TV from the 80s that would hold its own against the American stuff today. "The Singing Detective" and "Boys from the black stuff" spring to mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTdJExrsQEk

The Fall, Luther, those were pretty good recently. No way they compare to the Wire or BB; so different it's like Bashstreet Kids vs Superman comics

Looking away from dramas, could a program like Newsnight (and Newsnight Review) exist in America?

I think British TV should aim a little higher than BB and the Sopranos.

^^^^^^^^

http://www.mooreadamsoncraig.co.uk/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/head-in-hands.jpg

have to say that series 2 of 'the line of duty' is hitting the spot at the moment.

so dark and twisted ..

love it.

and yes, despite the media overload, i really enjoyed 'broadchurch'

The Shadow Line was excellent, can't think of much else recently tbh. Fuck the BBC I despise them and that the likes of AMC and HBO make them look shit serves them right for being gutless toadies to successive shit governments.

The Shadow Line was excellent

good call. i had forgotten that ..

fuck the bbc forever but also fuck the british commentariat for all of these fawning articles about hbo

the sopranos is in another category to the rest of these shows

I'm sorry to hear that.

tbf i've seen one sopranos episode ever and it was more than diverting. h8 the hype most 'big' tv shows get as compared to their reality but that's not an argument for this thread rly. my best friend who knows me well says the sopranos is the one 'big' tv show he can really see me liking

Yeah, the current series of Line of Duty is brilliant TV. And I'm willing to bet that the US remake of Broadchurch won't be a patch on the original (see also US Life on Mars, US Shameless, US Being Human).

The "british commentariat" is that people like Brooker gushing on about The Wire and seeding other gushers? I can remember developing a resentment for The Wire because of various hyperbole, before I had seen it.

Broadchurch is like a stretched episode of Midsomer Murders and Life On Mars is garbage. Not a good time for British people to pretend the Beeb still makes great TV or quoting crap examples of US remakes as a rebuttal. The fact is the Americans have made some of the most essential tv series ever in the last decade.

we have made most of them ever

The Office

The brittas empire

Haha. I guess The Office is more than ten years old bt I like it on a purely dramatic level prob more than Breaking Bad

My own, probably quite easily taken to fucking pieces on ILX opinion why the beeb is shit. Is that it has been socially firewalled and no mavericks are going to get through the gates. People like Clarke/Loach/Bleasdale don't get a chance anymore.

yeah, i have posited this as "everything went to shit when they stopped making Play for Today" syndrome

essentially the BBC's best work, bar a few sitcoms, was never its most populist stuff

life's too short

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgRs7angW4k70KxNFZEdSh_BEUCt1JSdtAWWBq-kXqnfiCFICW

Blimey, I forgot that thing even existed.

McGovern's The Street was very good from memory, never caught the whole thing, might have to remedy that.

there was an article on slate that was saying "true detective" rips of "red riding".

I'm much more concerned about the lack of good British animation tbh

http://www.bolexbrothers.co.uk/

An example is The Thick Of It which was dying a death by the last couple of series whereas I feel Veep is in safe hands, because they have a track record of maintaining good shit for 5/6 seasons, without turning shows into self parodic pantomimes.

Thank goodness Veep is being made by completely different writers and producers and directors to the smug complacent pack that made The Thick Of It.

[smug]Stopped watching The Thick Of It after that superlative 2-hour double-bill Xmas/NY special because it was pretty damn obvious they weren't gonna top it[/smug]

In fairness lj you've hardly to spell out the smug tags by now mayne

Thank goodness Veep is being made by completely different writers and producers and directors to the smug complacent pack that made The Thick Of It.

You are so full of shit, the beeb will have a job for you already.

that's definitely an unwarranted if perfectly-formed rejoinder. history written by the zingers

that superlative 2-hour double-bill Xmas/NY special

btw this is not a thing that exists, and the last series was incredible. anyone who'd deny themselves the glory of frustrated non-Opposition Mannion is an enemy of joy.

noodle vague there, proving himself the valuable discourse-encouraging ilxor we all know him to be oh hang on

I thought The Thick of It was entirely good up until the last episode, and slightly suspect anyone who doesn't is a miserable nitpicker.

loved the last series of TTOI

in answer to (perfectly reasonable) op: edge of darkness, state of play and i'd prob say the fall, too. different in pace & scale to yer hbo epics but certainly not 'lesser'

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/noodle_vague/bart-simpson-generator_zpsc16a2928.gif

Line of Duty, hmm.

It isn't the Wire. Doesn't need to be. Isn't that sort of thing anyway. More drama than realism. Scope is smaller. Hmm.

To really answer OP's question we probably need to think about this whole 'scope' and 'scale' issue

My own, probably quite easily taken to fucking pieces on ILX opinion why the beeb is shit. Is that it has been socially firewalled and no mavericks are going to get through the gates. People like Clarke/Loach/Bleasdale don't get a chance anymore.

'Socially firewalled' is accurate at least.

(Why LoD is not the wire – actor playing Manish doesn't come across as convincingly evil at all, compare and contrast with I dunno anyone on the wire where characters do things that are believable even when they're nailing people up in houses covered in lime - WPC who goes to prison situation is not an accurate depiction of what that would be, more for like, teachers or call centre mangers who feel stressed at work and feel they're being fucked over (and probably are) to look at and 'relate' to – I mean it's still fucking terrifying but ...)

To really answer OP's question we probably need to think about this whole 'scope' and 'scale' issue

idk Breaking Bad was pretty limited in scope. Though I guess it had more episodes than most British shows get.

Actually yeah - there's not that many characters in BB

Been watching a bit of the US House of Cards and I think the original had a far stronger authorial voice and more cutting humour. Only a few episodes in though (plus I know far more about the mechanics of British politics).

The UK House of Cards trilogy is utterly fantastic and anyone who hasn't watched it should, by the way.

Will second State of Play, even if the resolution lurches forward out of nowhere (my impression of it, anyway).

Live Soccer Saturday

^ OTM

red riding?

David peace adaptation

not sure which the rolling uk tv thread is right now so i'm just posting here but - just watched the 1st ep of happy valley last night. so good!

I'm up to ep 4, it's incredible. And incredibly brutal.

yeah even now it seems pretty grim, not sure if my wife will keep watching

but so good!

I'll give that a shot. I feel a bit bad sometimes that I pretty much spurn all homegrown TV drama in favour of the yanks (even the Danes get more of a look in).

One mention of Southcliffe above here and a short thread for it.

I only watched two episodes but I found it quite striking because it was so quiet and had a visual style that was really unusual for tv. Maybe a little bit Tarkovsky-ish? I've never seen another tv show like that, in a way it's just as cinema-like as Walking Dead or Breaking Bad.

There has been quite a few recent offbeat looking British tv shows but I never watched them. Utopia and Babylon I think.

I've never watched I Claudius, The Prisoner, Naked Civil Servent, Alec Guinness version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or that old show with Tim Roth as a criminal; but I always hear they are great.

Happy Valley was brilliant. I thought Keeley Hawes and Line of Duty had all the year's plaudits sewn up (rushed ending notwithstanding), but I've had a bit of a rethink of that now.

so state of play is really fuckin good huh

I liked the Honourable Woman

Both of these are good.

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Happy Valley. Starts off as a fairly obvious Fargo ripoff and kind of runs out of steam by the end but Sarah Lancashire deserves all the plaudits she's gotten for it. She is incredible.

Broadchurch, on the other hand, was absolute shite.

Honourable Woman was absolute garbage

Britain seems to do better at one-off series with a set number of episodes. Brideshead Revisited, The Jewel in the Crown, Edge of Darkness and Our Friends in the North are all equal to or better than any of your US dramas.

Honourable Woman disqualified on account of the first three episodes imo

Is this the closest thing we have to a general British TV drama thread? Anyway, I finished watching Years and Years last night. Fantastic stuff.

I finished it last night too, would not go as far as fantastic, but it wasn't bad, afraid I'm too cynical to buy that ending with the fact that we run concentration camps in the UK of 2019 and nobody seems to care.

- Spoiler alert -

Really good but not fantastic otm. I really enjoyed the series (great cast and wow, Emma Thompson especially was brilliant). The penultimate episode was the best, but I thought the finale with the whole 'liberating Viktor' arch was a bit much. I don't think it's cynical per se: there's concentration camps all over the world (UK and US, too), but it hardly creates the stir it should.

But, as I said, pretty much great acting all around and RTD either got a lot of things right/made them scarily believable. It's just that some things aren't even predictions any more, they're real already :-/

Do wonder if there will be a second season, and if it can be 'not bonkers' after how this ended (with Edith uploaded in water molecules etc)

There will not be a second series.

the resolution will not be televised

Is this the closest thing we have to a general British TV drama thread?

I tried to get one going a (shockingly long) while back but it didn't take -

Rolling UK drama thread - "Paul Abbot, do you have David Simon's number by any chance?"

No programme that good should be tucked away on a rolling thread.