I Got Bored of Blockbuster TV, Then Five British Shows Woke Me Up

American shows are like mutton hot pot: big portions, thick meat, a rolling broth, and one bite gives you full satisfaction. British shows are like cold-tossed radish skin: crisp, sharp, a little spicy. After too much hot pot, one plate of radish skin and your head clears.

So when you finish Prison Break, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, True Detective, and The Wire, and suddenly feel a little empty, a little tasteless, don’t rush to find the next blockbuster. That’s the moment for cold-tossed radish skin. British shows are short, tight, and rarely padded. They express society and human nature in varied ways. The viewpoints are sharp, the acting is first-rate, and the scripts hold up. They don’t rely on special effects. They don’t do “cool” just to be cool. They leave blank space and let you think.

But first, a correction: the list below is not all British. There are pure British shows, British-American co-productions, and standard American shows. Don’t shove everything into the “British TV” basket just because it’s all good.

1. Only Five British Shows, and These Are the Five I’d Keep

1. Line of Duty

Six seasons. It’s about AC-12, the police anti-corruption unit, roughly the UK’s version of Hong Kong’s ICAC. The short guy and D-Supt are explosive. Get through Season 1 and the rest is smooth road. The show works through pressure: AC-12 investigates its own people. You think you’re catching a bad apple, then you pull one thread and the whole system comes out. Once you’re in, you’ll have a love-hate relationship with the words “procedural justice.”

2. The Capture

Season 3 is out this year. There’s nothing you can’t imagine and nothing that can’t happen: hearing is false, and seeing is also false. You can’t argue your way out of it. It’s bone-chilling. They say you killed someone, then you killed someone. If I were Grainger, I definitely couldn’t hold out. By the way, shouldn’t Grainger get some endorsement money from that green coat? The cruelest part of this show is that it doesn’t play with ghosts or monsters. It plays with surveillance, evidence, algorithms, and power. After watching, you’ll instinctively look up to find the camera.

3. Inside No. 9

It’s already reached Season 9. You have to be careful with this one. It’s like you’re walking down the road, thinking the path is smooth, the view is nice, nothing’s happening, and then you fall into a pit. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton write it and star in it themselves. The soulful duo push human potential to the extreme. Every episode is a standalone story: short, vicious, precise. The twists do the work of picking at human nature.

4. Slow Horses

Currently up to Season 6. The league of losers. Who says I’m useless? A group of intelligence officers exiled to a marginal department: foul-mouthed, bedraggled, stabbing each other in the back, but when real trouble hits, they can actually fight. It doesn’t stand on ceremony like traditional spy dramas. Instead it has that satisfying feeling of “the people nobody in the office can stand end up getting the job done.” British humor and spy suspense stirred together, very easy to swallow.

5. Happy Valley

Up to Season 3. A show I love. Older women are not to be messed with, and the young policewoman is gorgeous. On the surface it’s a crime show. Inside it’s about a woman gritting her teeth through family, work, and trauma. The lead has no cheat codes. She clenches her teeth and keeps going. If you liked that “life is too hard but it still has to go on” feeling in Mare of Easttown, you’ll probably like this one.

2. Side Dishes: These Are Worth Serving Too

For short, sharp deduction, go with And Then There Were None. Agatha Christie. If you like using your brain and playing detective, take your time and guess. A big chunk of the audience came from the book fans. There are also Murder on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, Marple, and plenty more. Go search for them yourself.

For cold cases, go with Unforgotten, six seasons. Again, older women solving cases. If you like Happy Valley, you’ll definitely like this one. No matter how many years you buried it, even if there’s only a bone fragment left, I can still nail it.

For elegant cons, go with Hustle, which ran to eight seasons. Every country has this type of show, but the most elegant one is still this.

For handsome gangsters, go with Peaky Blinders, six seasons. Such handsome gangsters. Handsome and young. A dream team for the girls. A youthful version of The Godfather.

For human nature stripped bare and left in the sun, go with Black Mirror, seven seasons. Everything you want is here: human nature, values, every kind of brokenness peeled down to nothing and sun-baked.

For something so real it leaves you gasping, go with Chernobyl. After watching, you can’t catch your breath. It recreates the Chernobyl leak from forty years ago without shifting blame and without fabrication. Note: this is an HBO/Sky co-production, not purely British.

There are also A Confession, Manhunt, Who Is the Killer?, Wire in the Blood, Whitechapel, River, The Missing, Code of a Killer, and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Anything with the short guy has a quality guarantee. With A Confession, even after the killer is caught, you’re still left unsettled. Manhunt has two seasons: as long as you’re alive one more day, you have to spit that breath out. Whitechapel ran four seasons. Jack the Ripper has been used to death, but this one is a decent effort. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the 1979 version, is one that can’t be surpassed. Pick a rainy, overcast day, brew a pot of Longjing tea, and finish it in an afternoon.

I haven’t seriously watched Downton Abbey or Sherlock, but their reputations are excellent. If it’s your thing, go for it. I’ve only seen one season of The Crown’s six. I don’t watch much historical material, but if that’s your thing, you can start. Rome has two seasons. It’s a historical epic. Not my favorite type, but very good. HBO/BBC co-production, so don’t call it purely British.

A few more need special mention. Mare of Easttown is American, but it deserves a spot. The Rose from thirty years ago has transformed into Mare with a thick waist and tree-trunk legs: dumped by her husband, her son dead by suicide, looked down on by her daughter. Kate Winslet shows a middle-aged policewoman’s effort, persistence, and stubbornness. She shows the exhaustion, the mess, the ability to fail and collapse. No big scenes. No big special effects. Reversals are sparse. As you watch, your heart tightens: life is too hard, but it still has to go on. The gorgeous Rose and the gloomy Mare. I did not recognize them in the first episode. Big Little Lies is also American: Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, and Laura Dern, three generations of beauties in one room. So lies can be this satisfying. When you see a beautiful woman, you’d better still be careful. Once women start using their brains, there’s nothing left for men to do. Bosch is American, ran to seven seasons, better every season. If you like crime suspense, follow it.

3. Derailing All the Way to Texas: A Rescue Show That Can Make You Cry

Since the title already says “step aside, I’m derailing this,” let’s derail all the way. When British shows feel too cold and controlled, switch to an American hardcore rescue show: 9-1-1: Lone Star.

“When the armored cash truck rolls and explodes through a hail of bullets, when a tornado turns a swimming pool into a pot of magma, this American show had me crying and laughing at the same time. I watched five seasons straight and couldn’t stop.” A must-watch for office workers slacking off: firefighters and police, a hormone shock scene. If you already think the main 9-1-1 is exciting enough, this spin-off, known as the “Texas hardcore version,” will use wilder disaster scenes and crazier rescue operations to refresh your understanding of workplace dramas. In five years on air, its Douban rating climbed from 8.4 to 9.1. A netizen’s sharp review: “Every episode uses the effects budget to blow up the screen, uses CP sugar to sweeten the audience to death, and uses human truth to stab straight through the office worker’s heart.” 9-1-1: Lone Star, with 126 life-and-death rescues, proves that heroes who save the world also tremble at night, holding the person they love.

When you’re typing “the writers’ brains are too big” in the comments, there’s always a science-minded viewer drifting by: “This is all based on real events.” Absurd rescue scenes: an auntie heats a microwave tinfoil container until it burns through the supermarket; a programmer thinks a 5G base station is the cause of COVID and attacks it with a crossbow; a rich lady walks an alpaca through the mall and gets it stuck in a revolving door. Magical Texas atmosphere: a tornado flips an entire street of RVs; a swimming pool turns into a pot of boiling water because underground magma erupts; someone even gets himself stuck in a corn silo and nearly becomes human feed. Official roasting is the deadliest: the fire captain dismantles a bomb while retorting to a reporter: “You’re asking if I’m nervous? May I suggest you first look at your own wet pants.”

You think firefighters only carry hoses? The entire 126 crew comes with the “beautiful, tough, and tragic” buff. Ceiling of brokenness: Captain Owen is the sole survivor of 9/11. Every fire scene explosion triggers his PTSD, yet he forces himself to lead the rookies with cold jokes: “Relax, Texas cockroaches have more will to live than you do.” Ceiling of workplace wish-fulfillment: a Muslim female firefighter whips off her headscarf and free-climbs to save someone; black single mother Grace answers the phone more calmly than Siri: “Ma’am, please stop screaming, otherwise I can’t locate your stuck fake butt.” The Season 5 opener is the wildest: armored truck robbers specifically target veterans; police and fire department team up to set a sting operation, and finally use bullet-hole positioning to break a window and rescue someone. What kind of TV show is this? It’s basically a Texas Counter-Strike practical tutorial.

Finally, the show’s killer line: “We’re not heroes. We just carry one more tourniquet than ordinary people.” With this line, I salute every ordinary brave soul who has held someone else’s hand in a moment of despair.

4. Closing: Watching Shows Is Like Eating, So Don’t Only Eat Hot Pot

My point isn’t “British TV is number one in the world.” It’s simpler: don’t always eat mutton hot pot, and don’t only eat cold-tossed radish skin. British shows give you a clean, sharp prestige feel. American shows give you the rolling-hot-pot satisfaction. Co-productions take the best of both. Eventually, after watching shows for long enough, you’ll hit that moment: a series ends, and your heart feels a little empty, a little tasteless. Then change the flavor. British shows are short, tight, and rarely padded. They express society and human nature in varied ways. The viewpoints are sharp, the acting is first-rate, and the scripts hold up. They don’t rely on special effects. They don’t do “cool” just to be cool. They leave blank space. If you like that clean, sharp prestige feel, start with these five: Line of Duty, The Capture, Slow Horses, Inside No. 9, and Happy Valley. If you get hooked, then we’ll talk.

I can’t write it all in one go, especially the many underrated and excellent ones. If there’s a chance, I’ll update more later.