All My Favorite British TV Shows on YouTube:
Escape To The Country
Welcome to one of my favorite TV guilty pleasures! Imagine a very English House Hunters where Brits trade in their big city lives for quaint (and some not so quaint) country homes. It’s AWESOME. You can go on a little trip overseas right from your laptop, plus as part of the house hunting, the host and couple partake in a local activity like cheese making or bee keeping to really take in the local flavor and see if they could live in a specific village. These people are SO English and some are so incredibly reserved it’s not your usual house hunter show where the couple is so ridiculous you want to yell at the TV. While I do watch this on YouTube (lots of recent episodes are available), you can always watch Escape To The Country on Netflix. Watch it, you won’t be disappointed.
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Travel Man
I’ve written about Travel Man before HERE but it can’t be shared enough. Funny guy Richard Ayoade goes on fabulous 48 hour “mini breaks” in cities around the world (but mostly close to the UK) with celebrities and hijinks ensue. Again, Travel Man is a little trip away from home right inside your computer (the most recent season)… or past episodes on Hulu
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Anything with Lucy Worsley on BBC
Lucy Worsley is a host on BBC, she tramps around the UK uncovering the history of the British people, whether it’s the Royals, authors, or even architecture. This episode above is from a mini-series called “A Very British Romance” wherein she jumps into how the idea of “romance” came into the every day life of Brits including the writing of people like Jane Austen, and how where she lived and who she was around influenced her writing and in turn her readers. Lucy’s series’ are a good watch for people who love history, travel, and a lady with a kind great but weird lisp-y accent.
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Great British Bake Off – CURRENT SEASON
We all know you can watch The Great British Bake Off on PBS and Netflix but did you know you can watch the most current episodes that aren’t on those services, on YouTube? Thanks to the YouTubers who upload and oddly edit entire episodes of shows like The Great British Baking Show, I am completely caught up and am happy to report, the new hosts and judge are GREAT and no one needs to worry about missing Sue, Mel, or Mary Berry (sorry Mary, we will still miss you!)
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YouTube has also brought me the special one-off episodes that will never be available on TV services or really relevant in other parts of the world like, The Great Comic Relief Bake Off, which is a solo special featuring celebrities baking for charity for Red Nose Day. Uh, we need these episodes Netflix! Everyone wants to see people like Michael Sheen and David Mitchell in aprons! “Clotted Cream is ALIVE” (said in the voice of Aro).
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The Graham Norton Show
You can watch full episodes on BBC America if you have it, but you can also watch long clips and sometimes full episodes on YouTube. Graham Norton is the go-to late night chat host in the UK, he always has the best guests, and sometimes questionable musical guests. The show also has this bit at the end called The Red Chair, audience members sit in the chair and tell a funny story to all the celebrity guests on the couch — if it’s a bad story, Graham pulls a lever and off they go (backwards), if it’s a good story they stay upright and the celebs give them a laugh. US chat shows NEED this on their nightly broadcasts:
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Other Super British Game Shows
YouTube is also great very super British shows like The Big Fat Quiz Show and Would I Lie To You?
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I leave you with one of my favorite sub-categories of YouTube videos that I watch a lot: super cuts with tons of mash ups from shows like Seinfeld and 30 Rock. This is not British, because this post started out as something else before I realized I watched a weird amount of British TV on YouTube and should probably write about that instead, but anyway. Anytime is a good time for D’Fwan.
Here’s every D’Fwan moment from 30 Rock:
