We have had a few threads recommending good British television shows available on streaming channels. Quite a few of them just started or are gotten ready to start new seasons. I thought this might be a good time to create a thread where we could exchange information about ones we recommend. They don’t have to be British or even foreign, although most tend to be.
I’m going to start with one which isn’t actually British, but is made there. Ted Lasso, the fish out of water comedy about an American football coach hired to coach a troubled English soccer team starts its second season on July 23 on Apple TV. I believe the first season got more Emmy nominations than any other comedy. If you missed Season 1 you can still get caught up before season 2 starts
Ted Lasso sort of takes the place of “Trying” a British comedy which just finished its second season on Apple TV. To me, there are two basic styles of English comedies: the Benny Hill type nonsense which I despise; and the smart clever “Four Weddings and a Funeral” style of British comedy which can be excellent. “Trying” is excellent. It’s about a couple in their early 30s living in London and trying to start a family. Their not successful on their own and turn to adoption, which apparently is very hard to do in England. They quickly learn they won’t be able to adopt a baby and then focus on older children. Still not easy. The show was created and is produced by a former child orphan who was adopted, so I assume it pretty carefully portrays the system.
The wife works in customer service at a car rental agency and the husband teaches English as a second language to immigrants, so they are not upscale. The do live in a 2 bedroom flat in Camden which is an up and coming area of west London, and when they decide to adopt they both try for promotions at work to increase their income. At first some of the lesser characters seem cliches, but as time passes we realize that they are more than that. It’s an excellent show and both seasons now are available on Apple.
The fourth season of the terrific British detective series “Unforgotten” just started in PBS Masterpiece Theater. There will be one episode a week so you can’t binge it. If you missed the first three seasons, you can binge them. The first season in particular in necessary IMO to understand the show. You really need it to understand the format and why the seemingly random scenes in episode 1 of three or four people seemingly having no connection to the crime are important. Each season deals with the attempt to solve a really cold case — a body found 20 or 30 years after he or she was killed. I would watch the first season, followed by the third, and then, if time allows, the second season. I have seen episode one of Season 4 and it contains a bombshell that every fan of the show will find shocking.
Not British, but if you missed “Mare of Eastowne” it now is streaming on HBO Max. And, the seventh and final season of “Bosch” the detective show starting Titus Welliver has just started on Amazon Prime.
In the animal kingdom, the BBC series “Meerkat Manor:the Rise of The Dynasty” recently started on BBC America and other streaming sites. The original “Meerkat Manor” was broadcast ftom 2005 to 2009. Scientists from Cambridge university had been following a clan of Meerkats in the Kalihari Desert for 10 years before then. The dominant male and female of the Whiskers clan wore monitors around their necks and multiple cameras covered all the going ons. The rival clans occupying surrounding territories also were studied.
It was fascinating television. The new show, ironically produced by Oxford but still relying on Cambridge’s continued work follows the continuing trials and tribulations of the Whiskas clan, now led by Swift, a granddaughter of the original matriarch Flower, who guided Whiskas to great growth and success and then gave her life to save her last litter of three pups plus a fourth pup who Whiskas had found abandoned and she had adopted. The three other groups they follow now also are led by granddaughters of Flower, so the genes are good.
Episode 6 of the “Dynasty” aired last weekend, and I was pissed to learn that the final six episodes won’t air until September. But, for those who missed the original series, it gives you time to get caught up if you wish to. At least watching the first year is a good introduction to meerkat society.
Hoping others can add other shows to this list to keep us all occupied until football kicks off in September.
I’m going to start with one which isn’t actually British, but is made there. Ted Lasso, the fish out of water comedy about an American football coach hired to coach a troubled English soccer team starts its second season on July 23 on Apple TV. I believe the first season got more Emmy nominations than any other comedy. If you missed Season 1 you can still get caught up before season 2 starts
Ted Lasso sort of takes the place of “Trying” a British comedy which just finished its second season on Apple TV. To me, there are two basic styles of English comedies: the Benny Hill type nonsense which I despise; and the smart clever “Four Weddings and a Funeral” style of British comedy which can be excellent. “Trying” is excellent. It’s about a couple in their early 30s living in London and trying to start a family. Their not successful on their own and turn to adoption, which apparently is very hard to do in England. They quickly learn they won’t be able to adopt a baby and then focus on older children. Still not easy. The show was created and is produced by a former child orphan who was adopted, so I assume it pretty carefully portrays the system.
The wife works in customer service at a car rental agency and the husband teaches English as a second language to immigrants, so they are not upscale. The do live in a 2 bedroom flat in Camden which is an up and coming area of west London, and when they decide to adopt they both try for promotions at work to increase their income. At first some of the lesser characters seem cliches, but as time passes we realize that they are more than that. It’s an excellent show and both seasons now are available on Apple.
The fourth season of the terrific British detective series “Unforgotten” just started in PBS Masterpiece Theater. There will be one episode a week so you can’t binge it. If you missed the first three seasons, you can binge them. The first season in particular in necessary IMO to understand the show. You really need it to understand the format and why the seemingly random scenes in episode 1 of three or four people seemingly having no connection to the crime are important. Each season deals with the attempt to solve a really cold case — a body found 20 or 30 years after he or she was killed. I would watch the first season, followed by the third, and then, if time allows, the second season. I have seen episode one of Season 4 and it contains a bombshell that every fan of the show will find shocking.
Not British, but if you missed “Mare of Eastowne” it now is streaming on HBO Max. And, the seventh and final season of “Bosch” the detective show starting Titus Welliver has just started on Amazon Prime.
In the animal kingdom, the BBC series “Meerkat Manor:the Rise of The Dynasty” recently started on BBC America and other streaming sites. The original “Meerkat Manor” was broadcast ftom 2005 to 2009. Scientists from Cambridge university had been following a clan of Meerkats in the Kalihari Desert for 10 years before then. The dominant male and female of the Whiskers clan wore monitors around their necks and multiple cameras covered all the going ons. The rival clans occupying surrounding territories also were studied.
It was fascinating television. The new show, ironically produced by Oxford but still relying on Cambridge’s continued work follows the continuing trials and tribulations of the Whiskas clan, now led by Swift, a granddaughter of the original matriarch Flower, who guided Whiskas to great growth and success and then gave her life to save her last litter of three pups plus a fourth pup who Whiskas had found abandoned and she had adopted. The three other groups they follow now also are led by granddaughters of Flower, so the genes are good.
Episode 6 of the “Dynasty” aired last weekend, and I was pissed to learn that the final six episodes won’t air until September. But, for those who missed the original series, it gives you time to get caught up if you wish to. At least watching the first year is a good introduction to meerkat society.
Hoping others can add other shows to this list to keep us all occupied until football kicks off in September.
