We Need to Talk About the Decline of British TV
Nostalgia versus reality
Take a cursory glance at Curious British Telly and you’d assume I’m obsessed with British television’s past. I am. However, I still have plenty of time for modern British television. It isn’t better than what came before, but it isn’t worse either. It’s simply different.
Trawling through the archives, I’ve uncovered many curiosities of broadcasting. Some excellent, some appalling and some downright baffling. For every Edge of Darkness there’s a Me and My Car. For every Only Fools and Horses there’s a dozen L for Lesters. And for every Blockbusters there’s a Think Tank.
And then there are the people, especially in YouTube comments under Little and Large clips, apoplectic about 21st century British television. People who want to plant explosives in the Love Island villa and bring back It’s a Knockout, cancelled television personalities and all.
So, what’s behind this rage? It’s a number of different things, some simple and some more nuanced. They may enrage some, make complete sense to others. Let’s take a look.
Television classics aren’t extinct
We all remember the classics, those shows which persist in our consciousness for decades after they were broadcast. Think Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers and The Office. They’re all shows which hold a special place in my heart, even if I barely watch them anymore.
The problem comes when we misremember the schedules. We don’t remember the complete dross which aired alongside the gems. Sure, in 1981, you had The Day of the Triffids to excite the senses, but you also had Embroidery: ten programmes about modern embroidery. The good was always tempered with hour upon hour of mediocrity.
Modern classics still exist, such as Fleabag, The Detectorists and Line of Duty. Their legendary status is still fermenting. Not all will endure, but many will stand the test of time.
Everything’s woke and politically correct
A common complaint is that modern British television is too scared to push boundaries in case it offends. The ghost of Sachsgate still looms over British television to a degree, but that was nearly 20 years ago. Every era has boundaries.
Can you imagine what would have happened if Naked Attraction was pitched to Channel 4 in 1985? Instant rejection. Had it been broadcast, moral outrage would have swept the nation. Mary Whitehouse would have fallen into a coma. Instead, in 2016, it simply raised a titter and the occasional eyebrow.
Admittedly, the mid-1980s were the heyday of Page 3 girls, but they’ve now been gone from British newspapers for a good decade due to changing ethics. So, yes, there’s some hypocrisy at play. But what I want to highlight is that British television was never wildly free. If anything, it was more puritanical and tightly controlled in the past.
There’s too much reality TV and cheap content
One of my guilty pleasures is watching Come Dine with Me and Four in a Bed. Simple television with real people and barely any need for your synapses to fire too regularly. Just perfect after a day’s work. Or once you’ve farmed an unruly child off to bed.
But has reality TV replaced scripted TV? No. It’s just more visible, especially on ITV2 and More 4, which specialise in cheap, repeatable formats. People complain about Love Island but it’s just as lowbrow as It’s a Knockout, albeit with wacky costumes replaced with washboard abs.
Perhaps the one sticking point with cheap content is that British comedy has suffered. Sketch shows are too expensive with multiple sets, location filming and countless costume changes. Instead, panel shows dominate. We’ve swapped out something genius like The Fast Show for 8 Out of 10 Cats - not because audiences demanded it, but because one is far cheaper to make.
The choice of content is overwhelming
I grew up with four channels. Now there are a thousand television channels and millions of YouTube options. It’s like the leap from Neanderthal to modern man, complete with sleeve tattoos. But more choice doesn’t mean a decline in quality, it’s more of a distribution problem.
In the past, everyone watched the same thing. We didn’t have any choice. This resulted in more unified viewing of the good stuff. But this shared culture meant many ideas were never made and countless niches were left unserved. Now that bottleneck is gone.
If you like something specific, it’s out there and available 24/7. Being overwhelmed isn’t the problem, it’s that our expectation of the old, curated experience clashes loudly against the age of algorithms and abundance.
The Bigger Truth
What this great divide ultimately comes down to is age and nostalgia. Classic shows anchor our youth, when life was undeniably simpler. Back then, television was my escape hatch from reality. From the 1980s through to the 2000s, I had very little to worry about as I digested Bric-a-Brac, The Bill and Peep Show. They were formative times without the crushing demands of aging and adult responsibilities.
And yet, in the last 10 years we’ve had programmes such as The Detectorists, This Country and It’s a Sin. Some of the best British television I’ve ever seen. It’s just newer, and hitting my mind in a different mode compared to 1997. British television hasn’t declined, it’s just sped up, spread out and left behind the idea that we all need to watch as one.
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I both disagree and agree with the above opinion. My own relationship with television started to become strained as the last century ended and the new one began. I was fortunate enough to grow up as a young boy in the 1970s, which has generally been regarded as the true classic era of British television, maturing from its embryonic years of the 50s, the optimism and meritocracy of the swinging 60s, leading on to the expansion to four national TV channels of the 80s, plus Breakfast TV, of course.
The 70s itself, though, was hardly a era that could be termed positive. Pessimism was its forte, plagued by domestic and international political and social crises, as has been the dismal byword in the 2020's. The British film industry virtually collapsed on this decade, as American film studios closed their UK operations,taking millions in financial backing with them.This was an unexpected boost for British TV, as all the top actors,directors and writers turned their attention to the small rather than the big screen ,obvious in the number of classic dramas, documentaries and comedies that are still cherished and discussed to the present day, the ratio of quality TV much higher then than it is now.
But there is a catch; there was far less TV in the 70s with just three major channels, BBCs 1 and 2, and regional ITV channels like Granada (which was my area). There was no 24 hour broadcasting, BBC1 often had closedown intervals with the famous test card and accompanied music for several hours during routine weekday programming, and aside from s7ch anomalies as Open University programmes and coverage of sports events (usually Test Cricket), BBC2's normal schedules began in the mid-evening around 7pm, which were lucky to go on five hours before closedown around midnight, about the same time BBC1 and ITV would lock up for the night. In the mid-70s, there was even less programming and earlier closedowns due to said crises as described above, like the oil shock, power cuts and three-day week to save and preserve precarious energy supplies. So yes, my views on this era of broadcasting are tinged with relentless bias and dreamy childhood nostalgia, but clearly it was not a permanent bed of roses. And despite the peerless classics we still love, there was an awful lot of "wallpaper" TV, flops, clunkers, embarrassments and fiascos that were quintessential examples of ephemeral TV, made for its time and place but with virtually no historical or cultural value barely a few months after broadcast never mind many decades later. Such clips turn up all the time on YouTube now and can often be discussed and broke down on various blogs, podcasts and seperate YouTube channels themselves in witty, informative and pithy terms, including Curious British Telly itself!
It was warned in the 70s that TV would expand into the multi-channel universe that indeed it has now become.So why is it that a grumpy non-millenial as myself no longer bothers with TV, not having said TV licence now for over a decade? I suppose I was always set in my ways, thinking 4 or maybe 5 national TV channels was more than enough, as the amount of good or quality TV was easier to notice and appreciate over average, mediocre or genuinely bad TV.With just 2-3 national TV channels in the first three decades of its major broadcasting history ( the 1940s to the 1970s), it was a fairly straightforward task to pick out the proverbial wheat from the chaff. But relentless expansion of broadcasting since the 1980s has not necessarily led to more choice. Most channels and programming are exhaustingly similar to each other, whether it be specialised in lifestyle, sports, drama, comedy, drama, religion, films, news, current affairs and indeed nostalgia/classic TV. Ideas and talent can only be spread so far; perhaps 4 national TV channels, or maybe even 3, was just about enough, but thousands of channels available on free view or subscription means that separating wheat from chaff is now a pointless,interminable, if not highly expensive task from my own point of view. I dread any possibility of wading through thousands of TV channels that could take hours before a high quality show or series turns up, as I'd be too tired to watch after such tedious searching. Perhaps there are more quality shows now with endlessly more TV stations available, but what is also undeniable is that there's far more broadcasting mediocrity and dross too, most of it going on 24 hours a day. TV has evolved as any other practicality or humanity itself, but such evolution for this particular medium has been to its detriment, not advantage.
Anyone who thinks that there isn’t any great British TV being made now isn’t looking in the right places. Your examples are spot on, and to this I would add Mum , Harlots , Small Prophets , Don’t Forget the Driver and many more. There is still a lot of bad British TV too, but there always was. We just remember the best, and the best of British TV in the previous decades was great too but some TV was very bad.