There are good shows (Deadwood, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Sons Of Anarchy, The West Wing, Curb Your Enthusiasm) & awful shows (some of your sitcoms. King of Queens, Everybody Loves Raymond, Big Bang Theory. I'm not a retard, I do not need a laughter track, it goes in all the wrong places and tends to be overbearing and horrendously irritating. Which is at least a part of why Curb is so good). American TV shows do seem to have a much higher budget than British shows, and they tend to be spectacular. I mean if you compare a revered American take on American politics, The West Wing with a recent British show on British politics like the fantastic The Thick Of It, The Thick of It is quite claustrophobic. Nearly all the scenes are essentially in one office, or the adjoining rooms. Over two whole series, focusing on about 5 people in that Department. Where as obviously The West is over a much larger scale. It's about the bloody President!

I think that American produces more good shows than anywhere else, but then I'm biased. Only the actually good shows tend to get picked up and shown in the UK. :)

Whenever i watch an American channel its always really weird picture quality, or at least a different type. Do you guys use different cameras or something?
Buh otherwise i dont pay much attention. Is sky american? their dicks. oh and fox news are cunts, especially that old man that had a go at that guy when he cried about the trade centre. that guy i love tho, :L i know im making no sense but oh well. Whats his name? hes so cool.

Hmmm, not sure. There all dicks though as far as ive seen :L

EDIT: JON STEWART! Thats the guy, hes funny

Edited by user 29 May 2009 09:24:33(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

I tend to think that we do low budget shows far better than the Americas though. But that's primarily because in the US if your show is low budget then you've been turned down by 18,000 channels already, where as here it's pretty much low budget or nothing. I'm also split on the 6 episode series against the longer US run. I like it from the perspective of watching stuff, especially on DVD. But on the flipside if you have a 6 episode show it's not likely to have any one episode significantly weaker than the rest. In a US season you are likely to have at least one or two episodes which just seem filler. I guess I prefer the HBO length, your 12-13 episode series. It's a good compromise.

I do think we can do low budget gritty drama shows rather well. Alot of them do end up being cop shows like Taggart, Cracker, Rebus or Life On Mars, but hey, they are still really good pieces of TV. And there is The Thick Of It which I think stands up as one of the finest British television shows of the last 5-10 years. The problem is that British television is really at a spectacular low point right now. In the past we had fantastic pieces of really good serious drama, 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' & 'Smiley's People', 'Edge Of Darkness', 'The Singing Detective', 'A Very British Coup' & 'Threads' all coming to mind as critically acclaimed examples from the 80s.

These days our television is dominated by populist swill that cares more about ratings than anything else which is frustrating because the BBC should be above that sort of nonsense. The BBC is paid for by license payers and so while still having some elements of light entertainment in the schedule to appeal to large segments of society, it should not be the case where serious drama is either dressed up in a 19th century costume or otherwise ignored in favour of soap operas, reality shows, decorating shows and other shows which are intellectually bereft. Why does ITV exist if not for that sort of thing? I'd even happily sacrifice sport from BBC TV if we got more in the way of serious new drama shows.

Some shows are worth seeing and some don't deserve 1/5 of the budget they receive (reality shows mostly).
I don't watch much television and when I do I either watch Animal Planet or series like House, Weeds, American Dad, etc.
But it's much better than brazilian soap operas or the brazilian versions of reality shows like Big Brother, so it's pretty entertaining when I have nothing else to do.

I think foreign shows are weird because they aren't American and I think American shows get dumber and dumber over the years. I hate reality shows, especially American Idol. Most of America's reality shows are stolen from other countries anyway. The only shows I usually watch consist mostly of cartoons or anime.

If there's one thing the UK is particularly good at TV wise, it's comedy. Even panel shows like Mock the Week, Have I Got News For You, QI, etc. Can't really think of many of those from the US.

And sacrilegious as it may seem to internet liberals worldwide, I'm not THAT into Jon Stewart or Stephen Coal Bear.

Yes it did, and that was literally imported from the UK.

Anything from HBO is good (The Wire, Madmen, The Sopranos) but the rest is pretty crap.

I absolutely love British comedies. And that's everything from Blackadder, to the Office, to Mr. Bean, to Coupling, to Monty Python, to Keeping up Apperances...

You call it a British comedy, I laugh heartily. It's always been like that. Something about British humor that just tickles my funny bone. As for American comedies, it's pretty much crap. There are a few gold ones, less so now than in recent years.. 30 Rock is about as dead on hilarious as you can get at the moment. HBO shows, as was mentioned are relatively brilliant. I never could get into The Wire though... it always seemed as though NOTHING EVER HAPPENED during any show. Just a lot of tense moments. I can recall a 3 or 4 episode span where this white guy was running for mayor. And he never actually RAN. They just kept TALKING about it. I got bored and moved on.

As for dramas, I don't really know a lot about foreign dramas. Reality TV I just don't watch, period.

And here in America, other than maybe a few soccer (football, what-have-you) matches, we don't really get much in the way of foriegn sports. Unless it's the olympics, then it's whoever's racing against Michael Phelps.