Why British TV drama is crap – and why this matters to tech firms

2 pence - and what of comedy?

As many have rightly pointed out, there has been some fantastic british drama over the last few years.

One more to add to the list, was the very short series, 'Black Mirror', which really pushed PC boundaries.

However, when it comes to comedy, it seems it's not only Britain that suffers, but the USA too.

We've had a two reasonable contemporary comedies lately - The IT Crowd from the UK and Big Bang Theory from the US.

Looking further than that, I'm hard pressed to recall anything in the last decade which is truly funny.

All we seem to get now are Quiz shows with comedians, which bolster their stand-up routines and careers.

Nothing wrong with that - some are genuinely funny.

However, we seem to have lost the creative spark that bought out gems such as "The Young Ones" - insanely British, low budget, politically incorrect - that show just how funny we are as a nation.

Perhaps that's half the problem, the majority of us practice comedy all day long at the office and perhaps it's hard for comedies to compete with general, exceptionally politically correct comedy which happens every day in offices up and down the country.

If anything, Political Correctness has killed British TV comedy - it seems we are too afraid to create the comedy which makes us such a funny nation - the ability to poke fun at ourselves and our taboos - for fear of upsetting 0.001% of the population. Yet we practice that same comedy every day, so there's just a TON of material ripe for the picking.

It's time to get a grip on the PC nimbys - take the overall viewings and ratings and compare it with the complaints. If it's over 50% complaints, can the series. Why the hell should 99.998% of the population have to pander to 0.001% ?

How to appreciate British TV in one easy lesson

Watch American TV. And yeah, I'm one of 'em.

It's not crap and you better be right with the US drama you watch.

Why the hell does the mention of the word Google, immediately draw the comments off the subject? If ever there was a company without direction, there you are.

Line of Duty has been excellent. Whether its made for the home audience or not, its been refreshing. However, likewise the US drama's are good, You have to choose carefully though, because if those US drama's dont get the 50B viewers for every episode, you probably won't see the story out to the end. Anyone remember Fast Forward, that I thought was excellent, but no, canned. Body of Proof, thoroughly enjoyable, but it took considerable facebook pressure to keep it on for a 3rd season and that season is coming with major cast changes. Falling Skies, great idea, concept and season 2 was seriously struggling for story until the little chippie in the biplane turned up. I wonder if having Mr Spielberg on the design team will be enough to see a season 3.

Even CSI Miami dies this year and that could have just run forever.

Look at Silk, excellent, personally can't stand lawyers and you want to believe that Martha's type do exist but again short series because money is obviously tight and there are BBC exec expenses to pay. The jewel in the crown was always Spooks, the original team but even the transition to new members was well handled. Even that had to be closed down.

Doctor Who, has become, well something that could well have been directed by Google, directionless.

Here's hoping that those 24 channels that the BBC has opened for the Olympics don't cause the drama budget to be cropped even further.

I know what happened with Blackout.

It was first 'green-lit' and made, THEN a BBC head (Art or something) decided he/she did not actually like it!

So it sat for six months, eventually being cut down from 4 episodes to 3. And it shows. The production was external to the BBC, and what I've heard was, apart from the Director, produced by a complete bunch of idiots who desperately need to grow up and start being f**king professionals. They really didn't know what they were doing, and probably spent half their time on TwitBook, not caring about what they were doing at all.

It was crap because it was produced by childish block-heads. That's why.

*Rant over*

: )

A Very British Coup

Now that was a classic piece of British drama (1982) adapted from a great book. It's a pity we don't get dramas like that these da.......awww shit! Channel Four is doing a remake. Let's hope they don't bugger it up.

License Fee

I'm not sure it matters so much to technology, but I think it does matter with regards to how people see the license fee.

We've been told for decades about all the great things done at the BBC because of how it's uniquely financed, but I honestly can't put their drama or comedy over the things coming out of the US. I'd probably put C4's output above the BBC's now (Being Human was very good, but I'm struggling to think of much else that I set the PVR for). The best two recent comedies (The I.T. Crowd and The Inbetweeners) were both on C4.

Good article in general... & Re:crap American television

I think one of the things you could have focused on, is that Americans produce such top rate shows BECAUSE they produce so much crap!

I.e Scale is important, The more shows in production, the greater supply of production, the lower the production costs.... This in turn makes it cheaper to experiment, which ultimately produces the good shows, even if entirely at random (South Park creators didn't predict THAT particular experiment was the one that would succeed, same as angry birds). So, put another way, the UK doesn't produce sufficient crap, probably because of the CROWDING OUT of the BBC, but that's just speculation.

P.S. As good as the article is, it's not clear how bad shows clearly link to consequences for the Tech sector.

Libertarian leaning South African.

I was mystified

when I read this article.

In my opinion (and of my beloved Wife) it is American TV programs of any sort that are Crap.

Most English/British TV is very good.

Even down here in New Zealand the English TV is preferred to American.

Ha

American TV:

Endless CSI type programmes

Endless 'law' type programmes

Endless vampire type programmes

British TV

Endless auction programmes

Endless "do up your house programmes"

Line of Duty: Breath of fresh air.

The state of British TV drama is reflected in my DVD collection:

* Edge of darkness

* Tinker Sailor Soldier Spy

* Smileys People

* A Very British Coup

* The House of Cards

* The Sweeney

* Aufhedersien Pet (sp?)

* Soldier Soldier

etc

In other words, it all started tailing off > 1988. Could be an age thing though. My kids think "24" is awesome. I think its terrible. They think Lost is awesome. I thought it was a black comedy. Absolutely hilarious. They say I'm an old square. I say they haven't been treated to a good drama. They thought Smileys People was stodgy old shite.

Meh. I'll stick with what I know, thanks. Enjoying Line of Duty though. And I admit, I do enjoy Ashes to Ashes et all. BT Vision has a "box sets" option in the online menu. You select it and there's probably 50 or 60 full box sets to enjoy. All for free. Bloody excellent.

No, no, no!

"stretching the audience, knowing that they have DVD and TiVO to allow you to replay the important bits "

This is what books are for. Alan Moore described one of the advantages of books over films as the fact that you can skip back to a previous page and reread it knowing what happens later, allowing you to grasp the import of certain scenes. This is a good thing, but it's certainly not what I want from my TV. TV (like film) should be passive - if I have to skip back on various scenes to make sense of the diaglogue, or follow the plot, that means it hasn't be written properly. Good TV should be easy to follow, and still make sense if you miss an episode - if you can't manage that, write it as a film instead, to be watched in one go.

I gave up on The Wire after the first two episodes, as it was tedious, plodding shite. TV is supposed to entertain, not be a chore. Yeah, I've dissed The Wire, so I'm clearly a massive thicko - downvote me till I burn.

I do agree that most British telly is toss, though.

all TV is CRAP

I would like to chain the author to a chair and watch American TV for a week. Only then would you see the true meaning of CRAP. But to be fair, all TV is CRAP and some is worse than others.

Were we watching on different planets?

Tell you what, Andy, you just go ahead and enjoy one-hour drama that's teaser-ADVERTS-act1-ADVERTS-act2-ADVERTS-act3-ADVERTS-act4-ADVERTS-epilog(ue). Oh, and some more ADVERTS before the next hour's teaser. For a total of about 42 minutes' actual drama in each hour.

I've written to that format. It's a bitch. You've got to contrive some kind of plot twist every few minutes to time with the ad breaks, because you need to make sure the viewers stay and watch the ads - that's where your pay comes from - and come back for the next act, because that keeps the sweeps+ratings alive, and that's where your next season's (or part season's) paychecks/-ques are coming from. Never mind about the story, never mind about the talent, never mind about the setting, the arc or the production values, just so long as the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR keeps turning up.

You criticise UK drama compared to the US product, but that's because you've come to expect material written to US constraints. British drama doesn't play well in the States, unless it's been written with export in mind, because its pacing doesn't fit well with commercial station broadcast structure, so it ends up on PBS or similar. That's changing. I notice that productions like Sherlock are now written to be broken to US structure; British TV writers are learning.

Yes, the top tier of US TV drama has really improved beyond all expectation in the past 15 years, maybe 20, led by some screenwriters who really cared about quality writing, and some producers and studios who recognised - at LAST! - that if you produce good product, you get ratings and income. But the vast majority of the rest is still ghastly stuff, utter tripe that plays to loyal niches with low expectations that are duly met (near enough). Setting the top-flight programmes of both countries to one side, the general run of British TV is and always has been massively superior to the US (Jeremy Bloody Kyle notwithstanding).

"Which is not to say Line of Duty is in the American league. The supporting characters are cyphers. They have little or no psychological complexity or lives of their own. A good test of a drama is how quickly you can imagine the characters having their own spin-off series. By the end of the second series of The Sopranos, each of Tony’s crew was so richly drawn you could imagine a spin-off for each one without too much difficulty. Not here."

Well as they have only had 3 episodes, not 2 long series, they wouldn't have, would they?

There are plenty of good BBC progs that do get discussed in the offices I visit, Sherlock and Dr Who, to name but 2, but I have never heard anybody ever, anywhere discuss The Wire and haven't even heard of Braking Bad.

Perhaps people in the media watch and discuss different programmes?