PBS
When Hotel Portofino was initially announced in the spring of 2022 as coming to PBS, it was billed as a sort of Downton Abbey on the Italian coast, with an upper-class British family escaping the dreary post-World War I landscape up north to open a luxury hotel in the series&
BritBox
One of the best — and occasionally most frustrating — things about Doctor Who is its longevity. The series, which premiered in 1963, will celebrate its 60th anniversary this November, a colossal achievement that spans 872 episodes, encompassing 300 stories spread across 39 television seasons. Wading into all that historical context can
PBS
Season 1 of D.I. Ray has all the comfortable hallmarks of a classic police procedural, a fresh perspective, and a compelling protagonist. That said, it also has plenty of room to improve. With the show quickly renewed for Season 2 by ITV in November 2022, the network has recognized
Netflix
When Top Boy premiered over a decade ago, in 2011, on Channel 4, it was not the sort of series one would expect to be still running in 2023. The British crime thriller was a scant four episodes long and ran consecutive nights between Halloween and Guy Fawkes. Created and
Classics Revisited
When considering the basic idea of a period drama, there are a few obvious examples that pretty much everyone cites as the pinnacle of the genre, series which stand as the ultimate ideal of what these sorts of historical stories are supposed to be and do. The original Brideshead Revisited.
PBS
The Good Friday Agreement, signed in April 1998 and ratified by both Ireland and Northern Ireland by popular vote a month later in May 1998, marked the end of a long and turbulent history between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, which had been actively violent for the
Movies
As of this writing, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are ongoing, but awards season is still on, with hopes that by the time the red carpets roll out in January 2024, there will be stars to walk them. The unofficial kick-off of awards season begins with the back-to-back international film
We Hunt Together
Crime thrillers and procedural series are a dime a dozen in the world of British entertainment these days. From the seemingly thousands of stories about individuals in a variety of everyday occupations (Catholic priest, restaurant owner, Anglican vicar, friendly old lady up the road) who decide to suddenly start solving
BritBox
BritBox has confirmed that the new ITV series, Passenger, will stream on its service here in the U.S. come 2024. Despite the name, the series should not be confused with the other U.K. TV series Passengers (plural), which ran on Channel 4 in the 1990s and then was
Apple TV
While the Tom Hiddleston-led The Essex Serpent was technically Apple TV+'s first foray into period storytelling, its forthcoming adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton's final unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, will be the streamer's first traditional costume drama. The series — which someone finally realized
Movies
Dead Shot, which debuted on Sky TV in May 2023 and played at the 2023 Edinburgh Film Festival, sits in a weird nether zone of British media made about the Irish Troubles, unafraid to show the complicated morality and brutality of the conflict but hampered by a vague centrism that
Annika
Unforgotten Season 5 might be arriving first on PBS in the fall of 2023, to introduce a new DCI now that Nicola Walker has left the series. But Walker's detecting skills won't be far behind. The debut of the second season of Walker's new