Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, and hey, since being kind of contrary is the American way, why not celebrate this most delicious of holidays by watching some of the best TV from the country so many of those early settlers were fleeing? Yes, everybody knows about Sherlock and The Office, but there's a whole cornucopia of excellent and lesser-known British series ripe for the streaming on Netflix. Load them up any time you need to zone out during a food coma or ignore your loved ones while wearing headphones. Remember, you can always pretend you're working!
Let's get the most awesome part out of the way first: In the post-World War I drama Peaky Blinders, Cillian Murphy plays a gangster who fights people with a pageboy hat lined with razor blades. While this makes him sound like a weaponized hipster, it's also based on the urban legends surrounding the actual Peaky Blinders street gang—though they're likely more fantasy than fact. Who cares! It's a fun bit of comic-bookery in an otherwise gritty historical look at the conflicts between gangsters, Communists, and the IRA in early 20th century Birmingham. And to reiterate, Cillian Murphy fights people with a pageboy hat full of razor blades, which is just fantastic.
Watch this if you like: Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood
Like Peaky Blinders, this show is soooort of based on a true story. During World War II, significant numbers of women really did work as codebreakers at a British intelligence facility known as Bletchley Park. After the war, most of them returned to domestic life, unable to speak about their classified contributions to national security or advance professionally beyond the limits created by the sexism of the day. The Bletchley Circle asks a question that history didn't, but definitely should have: What if these amazing women reunited and focused their incredible powers of deduction on ... solving crimes?
Watch this if you like: The Closer, Veronica Mars, Bones
If you know Idris Elba primarily for his spectacular performance as criminal mastermind Stringer Bell on The Wire, hearing him speak in his natural British accent—and play a police officer—may come as a bit of a shock. Get over it, because Luther may not be quite as nuanced as The Wire, but it's a hell of a lot of fun. As the imbalanced, volatile DCI John Luther, Elba is a crime-solving, rule-breaking machine who's always one step away from either losing his mind or turning in his gun and badge. The show's best moments revolve around his strange friendship with a murderous sociopath named Alice Morgan and are especially entertaining if you choose to pretend she is a British relative of Dexter Morgan.
Watch this if you like: The Wire, The Shield, Justified
Growing up is hard and awkward and terrible, as proven over and over again by this coming-of-age humiliation comedy about four teenage boys who are unlucky in love ... and just about everything else. This is very much the British Freaks and Geeks, a fantastic snapshot of how pathetic, awkward, and foolish the teenage years can be, packaged with a few more laughs—not to mention the comedic potential of high-schoolers who are legally allowed to drink.
Watch this if you like: Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared, Malcolm in the Middle
Sometimes you just want to be charmed by a delightful show full of pretty people and nice things, and The Paradise certainly fits that bill. Set in 1875 at the first English department store (modeled after Le Bon Marché), it follows young, clever shopgirl Denise Lovett, who quickly proves to be a marketing genius of Peggy Olsen-esque proportions. It's a far more confectionary experience than Mad Men, however: a workplace romance about a beautiful, talented girl whose primary obstacles are haters who don't want to admit how awesome she is (and of course, the British class system's penchant for keeping lovers apart). Also, it involves a lot of pretty dresses and parasols and a lovebird sale for god's sake.
Watch this if you like: Downton Abbey, Ugly Betty, Mad Men
Yes, it's another historical drama. This one is set during WWII, when most able-bodied men were off fighting the Nazis and resources at home were stretched tremendously thin. Michael Kitchen stars as the brilliant but understated Detective Chief Superintendent Foyle, the man in charge of solving the everyday felonies of the Sussex county of Hastings. Murder, it seems, doesn't stop even for war, and the time period provides a compelling backdrop full of mysteries, Nazis, air force battles, and desperate people doing terrible things.
Watch this if you like: Downton Abbey, Homicide: Life on the Street
This is a dark, dark comedy like only the British can do it, bringing all the discomfort of the UK version of The Office to the lives of two oddly appealing social miscreants: socially inept salaryman Mark (David Mitchell) and perpetually underemployed hedonist Jeremy (Robert Webb). You know how in Seinfeld, it kind of took a while to realize that they were sort of terrible people who didn't care about anyone else? In Peep Show that's the starting point, and their three-season journey from bad to "oh god, oh my god" is deliciously terrible, like watching a train wreck of ever-escalating bad decisions, borderline sociopathy and hard-earned regret from people who are much, much worse than you.
Watch this if you like: The Office, Seinfeld, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
If the idea of yet another show about a serial killer targeting women makes you want to roll your eyes or simply turn off the TV, we don't blame you. But this one has a lot more going for it than the usual fare, including the fantastic Gillian Anderson as badass police superintendent Stella Gibson, and an explicit focus on avoiding the exploitation that usually accompanies depictions of sex crimes against women. We can't tell you whether or not Anderson's British accent is any good, but she's fantastic as the take-no-crap investigator who dares to be a sexual being and an incredibly competent professional, staring down serial killers—and sexism—with the same cool confidence we loved in Agent Scully so many years ago.
Watch this if you like: X-Files , Dexter, True Detective
This is the last historical drama, we promise. This one is set in the 1950s and focuses on several things you don't often hear about: the desperately poor women of England's East End who had little access to reproductive health care, how terrible that made their lives, and the midwives who tried to help them. Much like new midwife Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine), many viewers may be shocked by the conditions they encounter, but it's a deeply affecting show even if it isn't always an easy one. It's also a stark look at how important health care and contraception are to the lives and well-being of women, a lesson that is tragically still as relevant now as it was then.
Watch this if you like: Mad Men, Grey's Anatomy
They've been trying to make an American version of this show for years now, but why wait? This British comedy about the three members of an IT department for a large corporation and their Dilbertian clashes with computer illiterate management is already pretty solid. Yes, there are some eyebrow-raising nerd stereotypes, and a deep silliness to many of the episodes that may not be for everyone, but The Big Bang Theory is an incredibly popular TV show, so perhaps this will prove equally palatable this Thanksgiving to lots of people's moms.
Watch this if you like: The Office, The Big Bang Theory
