My favorite TV show of 2024 couldn’t be more British if it tried. Set in a City investment bank battered by a chaotic treasury, it’s soundtracked by melancholic 1980s UK synthpop (think Simple Minds, Pet Shop Boys) and features a character named Sir Henry Muck. *Industry* dissects British society, spanning strip clubs, tabloids, private members' clubs, and country estates. Every moment is steeped in an astute, effortless understanding of British class and culture that feels like the product of years of observation. Yet the irony is that *Industry* isn’t entirely British.
While it’s filmed in the UK, boasts a mainly British cast, and is written by Brits Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, the series is fundamentally a US production. With prominent American actors, a US premiere, and funding from HBO—the network synonymous with prestige TV—it’s clear that, despite its British aesthetic, the money behind *Industry* comes from across the Atlantic.
This transatlantic nature isn’t unique to *Industry*—it’s increasingly the norm. Numerous shows that feel British due to their settings and casts are, in reality, American-financed. Recent examples include *The Franchise* (a UK-set superhero satire by Armando Iannucci), *The Diplomat* (about the US ambassador to the UK), *Say Nothing* (a drama on the Troubles), and *The Agency* (centered on a CIA spy in London).
Other 2024 productions blending British and American elements include *The Decameron* (Prime Video), *The Regime* starring Kate Winslet, Greek myth-inspired *Kaos*, period dramas *My Lady Jane* and *Bridgerton*, and disability dramedy *We Might Regret This*. Thanks to robust US budgets, these shows often exude polish and ambition, but beyond that, their styles and themes vary widely.
In fact, it has become almost impossible to produce scripted TV in the UK without American backing. From modern comedies like *Everyone Else Burns* and *We Are Lady Parts* to acclaimed dramas like *Top Boy* and even enduring classics like *Doctor Who* (now a Disney+ co-production), the influence of US funding is evident in their credits.
“The big question is: have we been unwittingly colonised by American television?” says Phil Clarke. The one-time head of comedy for Channel 4, Clarke now runs the production company Various Artists Limited (VAL), which has made a raft of British shows – from I May Destroy You to Bafta-winning sitcom Such Brave Girls and Julia Davis’s Sally4Ever – with help from US production companies, streamers and networks. (The company’s co-founder, Jesse Armstrong, helmed another transatlantic treat in the form of Succession.)
If British comedy and drama has been annexed by the US, it hasn’t exactly been a hostile takeover. In the 11 years since Netflix released its first original series, House of Cards, the TV landscape in the country has changed dramatically: content from US streaming platforms (Amazon’s Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+) means UK viewers now expect a constant stream of slick, sophisticated and expensive television.
Homegrown TV is struggling to keep up in terms of quantity and quality: it’s no secret that publicly funded channels and those that rely on advertising revenue (ie the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5) are in various forms of financial crisis; Clarke says programme budgets haven’t risen in a decade while costs have ballooned thanks to inflation. Time was when TV channels doled out enough money to make the TV series they had commissioned. “Now you just can’t conceive of making something for a British broadcaster without getting money elsewhere,” says Roberto Troni, VAL’s joint MD. Who comes to the rescue? Usually, the Americans.
This may seem like a troubling trend—after all, it’s not ideal for a cornerstone of British culture to cater to American preferences—but there are positives to consider. For *Industry* creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, this shift has been a game-changer. During the 2010s, they struggled to break into British TV, which they saw as stale and uninspired. Down lamented the repetitive nature of programming, describing it as "the same show 10 times over, always a grey procedural," while Kay criticized the industry as "defanged, dulled, and unartistic." Both felt locked out of an industry dominated by a few established writers.
HBO, however, embraced their vision. The network began developing *Industry* in 2017, with the BBC joining later as a co-producer. The first season aired in 2020 on both platforms. Could a British broadcaster have commissioned the show independently? "Absolutely not," says Kay. He points to the creators’ lack of prior recognition, the absence of existing IP, and the show’s "rarefied and esoteric" nature as barriers. For British networks like the BBC, the concept would have been too risky—and, perhaps, too bold.
HBO’s willingness to take a chance stemmed from its commitment to nurturing fresh talent and its subscription model, which allowed for a longer development process. What British broadcasters saw as risky, HBO viewed as an opportunity to invest in innovation.
A conversation we have is: how long is so-and-so going to make shows in Britain before they attempt it across the water?
Phil Clarke
Still, why do American broadcasters bother taking risks across the Atlantic when they could do it on home turf? The truth is that despite a post-streaming glow-up, making TV in this country is still a much less expensive proposition than in the US. “We definitely used to be really cheap – and we are still relatively cheap compared with the States,” says Clarke. That’s down to the tax breaks that make the UK a famously popular place to film (it has been forecast that the UK may soon overtake LA in terms of studio space), plus the fact we are used to making shows on a shoestring. “Sometimes we talk to our American agents and they can’t believe the tiny budgets we make our shows on,” says Clarke, who maintains that British TV remains a “cottage industry” where writers work in their bedrooms, rather than a swish corporate world.
Throwing relatively small amounts of money at British productions and creatives means that if a show does hit – such as Scottish comic Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer, now one of the most-watched Netflix shows of all time – you’ve struck gold, and the increasingly broad appetites of US audiences (partly a result of the plethora of international content available to them on streamers) makes that more likely than ever before.
Yet TV programmes don’t need to rake in viewing figures to prove a clever investment: a zeitgeist-defining cult hit like Succession can provide a broadcaster with cultural capital or reinforce its identity and brand, says Troni. Dhanny Joshi is the producer of the sitcom Dreaming Whilst Black, which follows a wannabe film-maker in London; after the show was commissioned by the BBC, he needed to source extra funding. He found a partner in hip US tastemakers A24 – known for zeitgeisty films such as Uncut Gems and Everything Everywhere All At Once (as well as the shows Euphoria and The Curse – which felt the show “aligned with their vision, because they’ve got a brand they’ve honed really well”, he says. (A24 also co-produced VAL’s Such Brave Girls and Shane Meadows’ period drama The Gallows Pole, and are partners on Michaela Coel’s upcoming new series). Dreaming Whilst Black wasn’t a ratings smash, but it was a critical hit – crowned the second best TV moment of 2023 by Deadline – and a financial success, earning £4.3m in international sales.
Clearly, this isn’t just about cheap gambles: British talent is valued highly across the pond. Performance-wise, we have a reputation for professionalism – the popularity of British actors in Hollywood, a continuing source of consternation in the US, is largely thought to be down to the superior training offered in this country. When it comes to writing, however, our cottage industry approach is the draw. In 2015, then-HBO chief Michael Lombardo told the Royal Television Society that he found UK scripts more “voice-driven” and appealingly handcrafted due to our lack of writing rooms.
Yet this appreciation is resulting in brain drain. Clarke complains that US broadcasters “suck up all the top British writers. Often a conversation we have is: how long is so-and-so going to stay around making shows in Britain before they go and attempt it across the water?” It’s true: Richard Gadd now has a first-look agreement with Netflix; Kay and Down recently signed a three-year exclusive deal with HBO and Phoebe Waller-Bridge has had an Amazon deal – worth eight figures annually – since 2019.
That’s what’s in it for the Americans. But what’s the upshot for us? Industry may suggest US money has given British TV a kick up the arse (not ass), yet it has also booted it to face a slightly different direction. Industry was designed with US audiences in mind; the show’s “fish-out-of-water” US protagonist, chancer-genius Harper Stern, came from a desire “to ground an American viewer in the UK-ness of the overall experience”, says Kay.
It would be naive to think UK creators of US-funded shows get total free rein: Russell T Davies has confirmed that he has taken at least some of Disney’s notes about the new Doctor Who on board, while Kay and Down say they were encouraged to include some “over-explanation of British politics or media stuff” for Industry season three. Clarke recalls making a show for a streamer who asked if “somebody in the cast could speak more slowly for people in Los Angeles” due to their accent.
Transatlantic TV often means British television made for the benefit of American audiences – or, at the very least, American executives. In this case, Britishness becomes a fun theme, a point of difference, an interesting flavour. In Industry, the strange customs of society’s upper echelons are a mystery to be decoded. “You want to present something that feels like a little bit of a black box for an American viewer so they can get pleasure out of uncovering [meaning],” says Down. “I think some people really like the idea that it’s a slightly esoteric class analysis of a country they don’t live in.” Disney’s decision to fund the recent adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s Rivals may have been motivated by a similar logic (like The Diplomat and Industry, the show also features a fish-out-of-water American).
Industry’s hyper-real depiction of British life is thrilling and clever rather than cartoonish and ersatz. Yet this idea of trussing up British society for US audiences to goggle at isn’t always so edifying. Other shows take Britain and use it as a fantastical backdrop; a place of scenic olde worlde charm, odd behaviour and a lifestyle that is close to but tantalisingly different to the viewer’s own. Bridgerton, for example, gilds regency England with soapy plots and blatant anachronisms to sell a modern American fantasy of British history.
Meanwhile, Ted Lasso – a 13-time Emmy-winning show about a Kansas college football coach recruited to manage a fictional Premier League side – is set in the chocolate-box London suburb of Richmond, and makes hay from the culture clash between the rude, repressed British characters and the optimistic, open-hearted Lasso. Ted is an outsider, but US viewers are clearly the show’s central concern: the first episode alone features British characters using the terms “garbage” and “tie” (to mean draw). This uncanny cultural mashup can also be found in Netflix’s Sex Education, which sees British students wearing varsity jackets and playing American football, something its star Gillian Anderson has claimed was supposed to help it appeal to US audiences.
Ted Lasso has massively boosted the careers of its British cast members – but it’s almost as if their job is to cosplay Britishness for American eyes (the model is even being copied by Amazon, who in 2022 ordered All Stars, a Reese Witherspoon comedy about a cheerleading coach who attempts to introduce the sport to the UK). But even when the TV shows in question don’t pander, their very existence is still partly determined by the preferences of US audiences. Historically, British comedy was seen as a trendily left-field in the US; this stereotype means US broadcasters often prefer cutting-edge shows. “It’s perhaps easier to sell a British comedy if it’s considered cool in America as there’ll be a cult audience for it,” says Clarke, citing the outrageously dark 2023 sitcom Such Brave Girls as an example.
That’s all well and good – but what about more mainstream fare? Increasingly, it’s not getting made. “It definitely feels like there’s a slight prescription from America,” says VAL’s head of comedy, Jack Bayles. “And I do wonder if that means that culturally we’re lacking the stuff that is purely for us, in the way that Only Fools and Horses or Gavin & Stacey was.”
Despite his positive experiences working with HBO and other US companies, Clarke views this dilemma as something of an existential crisis for UK television. “British comedy, and I suspect drama as well, needs a Britpop moment where we say: hang on a sec, how do we just go back to making shows about Britain for British audiences?” Considering the perilous financial outlook for our major channels, it’s hard to see British TV ever existing independently again. For Clarke, however, it’s “a challenge that I’m determined that we solve, because therein lies the future”.
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