The second of 2 facebook posts:

UK SHOWS I LIKED THAT I THINK SOME PEOPLE MIGHT NOT HAVE SEEN

Folks liked the last post I made about TV shows. Thank you for the comments and likes and DMs.

I said I would write a list for UK shows, so here it is.

I’m not gonna write about some of the most obvious stuff here like Dr. Who, Are You Being Served, Faulty Towers, AbFab, ETC. I’m going to try to limit this to newer stuff, or stuff that might have flown below most folks radars (most folks who are reading this anyways).

This list was really hard to write, there are so many shows I’ve decided to split it up into a couple of posts, the second will come later.

Happy Valley

This might be one of the best television shows ever made. What is even wilder is that there is a 7 year gap between the second and third season, and the show does not miss a beat. On the surface another police drama. Wonderfully woven under that surface is a powerful family story and the heavy emotional tolls we bring with us no matter where we try to run. And that one death. Look, I’m not macabre, I just love when a show is honest, and sometimes a character has to die to maintain that honesty, and the way they die is a part of that too. Death is sometimes a surprise, and shocking, and painful and this show will remind you of that.

Every line and every scene in this show has a purpose and a direction and a tone, even with that 7 year gap. It really is a credit to the writer and showrunner Sally Wainwright (Last Tango in Halifax) and the star Sarah Lancashire. When Sally Wainwright first conceived the show she had Lancashire in mind for the lead. It’s 3 seasons of a British show, so only 18 episodes. That’s less than the number of Battlestar Galactica episodes you binged on your first day of COVID lockdown.

If you need something similar, the closest you’ll get is Blue Lights, which is OK, nowhere near as good.

8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown

Cats does Countdown is the result of an accidental pairing of two TV shows to make one of the best things to have ever been accidentally discovered. I love British comedy panel shows. 8 out of 10 Cats is one of my favorites. It’s a comedy panel game show that is supposed to focus on guessing the results of surveys about current pop culture news in England. It is almost always completely off the rails. Countdown is a show in the vein of Quiz Show where England’s smartest compete switching between rounds of word puzzles and number puzzles. It is also one of Britain’s longest running game shows.

In 2012, Channel 4 execs thought it would be a cool idea to convince the shows under their banner to do “mash-ups” of other shows on their network. They pitched the idea to do an episode of Countdown to the 8 out of 10 Cats crew. It was such a massive hit that Channel 4 ordered the full series. It is now in its 14th year. There have been some amazing co-hosts, and some absolutely terrible guest stars. Jimmy Carr (no relation to Alan Carr) hosts and Sean Lock absolutely shines. Jon Richardson is great as well, at the same time Jimmy Carr and Sean Lock together is one of those once in a lifetime pairings. Jimmy Carr recently said that Sean Lock was the funniest person he’d ever met or worked with. Sean Lock was brilliant and wild, it is joyous to watch him work alongside Jimmy Carr somehow playing the straight man here. The production team is barely in control of anything, especially when Joel Wilkinson makes one of his many, many appearances, and you feel like you are getting a glimpse under the hood on how brilliant comedy is made. There is something wonderfully peanut butter and chocolate about the mash-up of 8 out of 10 Cats does Countdown. It carries on well enough after the too soon passing of the great Sean Lock, it will also never be the same without him. The silver lining to his death is that it sparked a resurgence and burst of great attention to both 8 out of 10 Cats and Cats Does Countdown.

Ghosts

There is an American version of this show starring an Australian— It’s ok. The British version threads a needle the American version doesn’t. It’s smart, yet not arrogant. It has moments of beauty that are not overpowered. It is funny without making fun of itself or stooping to an easy punchline. It also doesn’t center on a single cast member to move the story. There is no need to carry a significant explanation to the plot either.

Oh right. The plot. So basically a young couple moves to an ancient estate in England that is a part of an inheritance. After an accident, one of the cast members can now see the ghosts who inhabit the premises. Those ghosts are bound to the area where they’ve died, some having died 10,000 or more years ago, until for a myriad of reasons finally ascend to another plain of existence… and so comedy ensues?

It is funny. Kiell Smith-Bynoe is great. Charlotte Ritchie, from Fresh Meat, Siblings. Lolly Adefope (Plebs, Everyone Else Burns, Miracle Workers). If you’ve seen a few British shows you will recognize Simon Farnaby. He’s one of those actors that pops up in everything, he was amazing in Detectorists. Laurence Rickard is the true gem in this show. Unrecognizable in his brilliant performance, he is also part of the writing troupe (Them There) responsible for this show. I hope with the selling of the show to American television we get more and more of his and the troupe’s work.

Detectorists

This is on my top ten of all time shows. From the first note of the amazing theme song (a favorite of any TV show theme, written and performed by Scrotal Recall/Lovesick star and amazing talent Johnny Flynn) to the very last episode; I am always left wanting more of every minute of this show. Metal detectors are the tools used by detectorists, don’t worry, they will remind you. There is a theme in the shows on this list where they don’t make fun of their subject matter, that would be the cheap joke to make. Does Detectorists make fun of the people that use metal detectors? Yes, does it make fun of them for detecting? No. In fact, by the time the series ends even the most cynical about the hobby will be turned. Toby Jones is incredible, as always, delivering a performance full of nuance in a character with a deep and complicated backstory that would fall flat with lesser actors. Mackenzie Crook also stars, he was also the show creator and writer, and is equally brilliant. His writing is spot-on, and his portrayal of the character is both hilarious and heartfelt. When Crook talked about returning to write a 75-minute Christmas special five years after the show’s finale, he expressed genuine excitement about discovering what his characters would be up to next. It’s clear that Detectorists is a deeply loved work of art, and one of the best examples of “slice of life” storytelling in a series.

Big Boys

A standout series created by and written by Jack Rooke who is quickly becoming known for blending the raw reality of life and grief with the comedy of everyday struggles. Jon Pointing (of Plebs and other credits) might seem a little one-dimensional at first, but as the series unfolds, we see almost unending depth and layers of his performance that perfectly complement the incredibly intimate and personal story Jack Rooke brings us. Everyone should have noticed his work here and I hope that means we see more than the dumb blonde shtick he might sometimes be typecast with.

The series follows two young men (the titular Big Boys) entering their first year of college. One is a slightly older, non-traditional student who’s just starting after taking time off to care for his grandmother. The other is a young man who took a gap year after his father’s death and is grappling with coming out. Both are dealing with their own personal struggles while trying to navigate university life, facing a delayed coming-of-age experience.

Big Boys was canceled twice—clearly by someone who never watched it, or maybe by some TV executive who is secretly a bigot. It certainly wasn’t canceled for lack of quality. In fact, it’s one of the best things to come out of Channel 4. Like so many great shows that get cut short, it had to wrap things up unexpectedly at the end of Season 2 after being informed they were to be cancelled, but Big Boys faced this challenge head-on and delivered an incredible season finale. Or so they thought. The end of season 2 should serve as a textbook example for any show potentially forced into a premature conclusion. It was so good in fact that it played a part in the reversal of that cancellation. So we got a third, stellar season. This last season really lands the theme of juxtaposing joy and pain. One of the best lines I’ve ever heard about losing someone too soon comes from the last episode of Season 3. It buttons up nicely while not diminishing the quality ending of Season 2.

Misfits

Misfits is a sci-fi-ish show from way back in 2009 about a group of young adults who gain unique superpowers after a freak electrical storm while on community service. It got a lot of completely baseless comparisons to the American show Heroes from the same era. If you’re looking for what Heroes should have been, this is it. While Heroes struggled with a messy storyline and never quite nailed its execution past the first season, Misfits manages to craft clear, engaging story arcs across each season, despite a revolving door of actors.

Where Heroes watered down the themes of being an underdog and the classism inherent in superhero stories, Misfits fully embraces those ideas, often with a sharp political edge.

This show also launched the career of some of England’s best dramatic talents. You’ll recognize a lot of faces, too many to list and all too good in this show to single any one out.

The first three seasons are definitely the best, but after some encouragement from my friend Josh, I went back to finish the series, and while it’s a bit messy at times, it’s definitely worth it. Plus, it’s one of the few shows on this list that offers a substantial number of episodes for hardcore bingers.

Sex Education

Lookit here, if you have netflix and you haven’t seen Sex Education then you should cancel your netflix account because you aren’t getting your money’s worth, they were promoting this show pretty hard for a while, and in true American streaming fashion were claiming credit for producing the show.

Netflix sells it as a “British teen sex comedy” to which I would respond with a laughing ‘fuck you buddy. In fact I think this series stands as some kind of metaphor of how poorly older folks have treated Gen Z as a whole. Writing them off as lazy simpleton sex obsessed crybabies when in reality they face the harshest childhood possible, come through it with amazing poise and dignity and emotional maturity, and out the other side with more compassion than the best of my generation or the boomers before me. This show is a showcase of exactly that. How both vulnerable and messy life is for them, while also showing the rest of us how to treat each other and find ways to live the best life possible out of what remains of the shit world we are left with. Joel Wilkinson is magically hilarious in his guest appearances. Ncuti Gatwa is great here, I hope he can recover from that disastrous season of Dr. Who, or that he realizes he can do better, because they are wasting his talent. Connor Swindells also shines. Aimee Lou Wood nails a transformative performance through the series. Look for her new series Daddy Issues, which is also great.