British television is shaped by two things: a public service tradition that predates commercial broadcasting, and a strong preference for short, tightly written runs over long ones.
Series, not seasons
The vocabulary differs. A British series is what Americans call a season, and it typically runs to six episodes. Some run to three. A comedy that made two series of six and then stopped is not a failure here — it is often regarded as having done exactly the right thing.
Fawlty Towers made twelve episodes in total. The Office made fourteen. Blackadder made twenty-four across four series set in different centuries. The principle is to stop while it is still good, and British audiences regard American shows that run for a decade with a certain suspicion.
The channels
- BBC One and Two — licence funded, no advertising.
- ITV — the main commercial network, regional in structure, home of the biggest soaps and entertainment formats.
- Channel 4 — publicly owned but advertising funded, with a statutory remit to be innovative and to take risks. It has produced a disproportionate share of British television’s best and most difficult work.
- Channel 5 — the fifth terrestrial channel, historically downmarket, now the home of a surprising amount of factual programming.
Soaps
British soap operas run in the evening, not the afternoon, and are watched by everybody rather than a niche audience. Coronation Street has run since 1960 and is the longest-running television soap in the world; EastEnders since 1985; Emmerdale since 1972.
They are grittier than American daytime soaps, set in working-class communities, and their big storylines are genuine national events.
The formats Britain exported
An outsized share of global television was invented here: Big Brother (originally Dutch but developed here), Pop Idol into American Idol, The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing into Dancing with the Stars, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, The Weakest Link, Top Gear, and The Great British Bake Off — the last of which became an unlikely international phenomenon precisely because it is so gentle.
Watching together
Britain still has genuine appointment television. Bake Off finals, Strictly, the Christmas Day schedule and big soap episodes draw audiences that watch live and discuss it the same evening. Streaming has eroded this but not removed it, and the shared national schedule remains stronger here than in most comparable countries.
The watershed
Nothing unsuitable for children may be broadcast before 9pm. The rule is regulated by Ofcom and taken seriously, and it means British television after nine is markedly franker in language, sex and violence than American network output — a contrast that regularly surprises visitors.