The Best British Shows to Stream from 2023

The year 2023 was a big one for streaming, though perhaps not for the reasons that immediately come to mind. It was not a record-setter or a significant breakthrough year. In fact, for many, it was terrible, with a dual strike that lasted for six months. However, 2023 marked ten years since Netflix launched House of Cards and declared an intent to "disrupt traditional linear TV" by removing the stranglehold of weekly debuts, hourly schedules, seasonal cancelations, and the like.

Netflix failed in nearly all of those stated aims. The Crown, one of the earliest projects that sprung from those stated aims (greenlit for six seasons at once, three casts turning over every two seasons, budgets and common sense be damned), ended this year with a final season split in two due to Netflix trying not to admit that all-at-once-drops don't work, and the unstated reality that it's like will never come again. However, Netflix did succeed in the overall goal of disrupting TV, nearly to the point of bankruptcy.

The resulting decade we've just lived through has been a bit Humpty Dumpty. The eggs have split apart to the tune of billions of dollars in debt. Now, all the king's horses and men are taking the field, about to reassemble the bits and pieces. However, until they do, British shows remain scattered across the landscape. By this time next year, we may finally start having fewer places to cover. But for now, here are the ten best British shows that streamed in the U.S. this year and the ten streaming services where they currently reside.

One would be forgiven for thinking there's nothing on Paramount+ but Star Trek and Yellowstone, but one would be wrong. First, Yellowstone is on Peacock, just the tip of the iceberg of how badly Paramount+ has been run since it attempted to morph from CBS All Access. However, lost in. the wilds of the streaming service, somewhere under the layers of Showtime, CBS, and Viacom stuff, a few series have managed to crawl over from Paramount's very ambitious (and currently failing) international titles project. 

Of them, The Gold is one of the best shows the project has produced, which is why Paramount+ brought it over as the flagship show in September. But, much like HBO Max did for years, they took an "if we just dump it here, they will watch" attitude, which is why no one in America knows there's a great true crime drama series based on the real-life BrinksMat heist, starring three PBS fan-favorites, Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey), Charlotte Spencer (Sanditon) and Emun Elliot (Guilt), sitting right there for them to watch. 

All six episodes of The Gold are streaming on Paramount+. The BBC has greenlit Season 2, which will probably go to a different streamer along with Season 1, as Paramount+ is not expected to survive 2024.

Speaking of shows on streaming services you don't have, 2023 marked the launch of MGM+, and before you say "What?" let me explain. MGM+ was a streaming service called Epix, which you may have vaguely heard of as a cable channel you have never watched. MGM owned it, and it was where Belgravia aired. In 2020, during the pandemic, Jeff Bezos tried to get MGM to sell him the final Daniel Craig James Bond movie since they couldn't put it in. theaters. They refused. He then tried to buy the James Bond franchise from them wholesale. They refused again. So, being an evil billionaire, he bought MGM. In the process, Amazon wound up with an extra streaming service.

The smart move was rechristening Epix to the more recognizable MGM+. The problem is James Bond's people refuse to make TV shows for it. So instead, Amazon rescued a little-known series from a failed streaming service called Spectrum called A Spy Among Friends, based on the nonfiction book of the same name about MI-6 double agent Kim Philby. Starring the great Damien Lewis and Guy Pearce, this six-part series is the anti-James Bond, deconstructing the myth of the gentleman spy and MI-6's supposed superiority. It's brilliant. No one knows it exists. Please fix that.

All episodes of A Spy Among Friends are streaming on MGM+, which you can get if you have Amazon Prime. 

Apple TV+ still tends to do "British-ish" programming more than it does "British" programming. (By "British-ish," I mean shows like Ted Lasso, The Buccaneers, Dickinson, and Masters of the Air, aka series that star British actors and feel British but are inherently American in spirit.) However, as the streaming service grows, it has slowly added genuine British fare, from Slow Horses to Hijack to this year's hidden gem, Still Up.

A rom-com about two people who never meet, Still Up stars Antonia Thomas and Craig Roberts as Lisa and Danny. He's a shut-in terrified of leaving the house; she's an insomniac, desperately in need of a friend. The two start an online friendship that becomes a Facetime friendship, and finally, a relationship, though not until the very end, obviously. The series is one of the sweetest romances to debut in 2023, an utter delight, the type of thing that once was a Valentine's Day big-screen special but now resides on streaming to stumble across on an insomnia night of your own. Give it a whirl; you won't be disappointed.

All six episodes of Still Up are streaming on Apple TV+, which you probably have free if you own an Apple product of any type.

You'll hear much about how Netflix is winning the streaming war right now. It's certainly ahead of most, but that's because it has room to fail in ways the rest don't. Case in point: The Diplomat. Netflix did not promote The Diplomat any more than Paramount+ did The Gold. And honestly, marketing probably figured it wasn't worth it, as the script was really not great. However, Netflix's algorithm is fine-tuned to surface shows to those who will click in a way no other streaming service has ever managed to replicate. 

Keri Russell is a critical darling from starring in The Americans and a fan favorite from Felicity. PBS viewers love Rufus Sewell. Marketing was unnecessary because everyone clicked and promptly discovered that the two of them were so great together that their chemistry overrode the dull plot and elevated the show to delightful. (The moment when she beats him with her shoe. I HOWLED.) Season 2 was greenlit forthwith. 

All episodes of The Diplomat Season 1 are streaming on Netflix. Season 2 will probably arrive in 2025.

For those who grabbed the "Disney+ and Hulu for $3.99" deal over the holidays, you are already beta-testing 2024's planned push to make Hulu a tile under the Disney+ banner. For the rest of America, that's still to come, but Hulu's programming this year, especially the British shows shunted onto it from Disney+ UK, has been a sign of how close the two are intertwined, with Extraordinary as a case in point. The TV series is a show about superheroes for people who have watched one too many shows under the Marvel tile.

Máiréad Tyers stars as Jen, a 25-year-old living in a world where everyone's superpowers manifest at 18. Well, everyone's but hers. She's normal in a world where no one is, and it's her excuse for why her life is a total mess and why she's not actually trying to do anything with it. This is the type of British comedy that could easily become too cringey, too maudlin, or too gross-out, but somehow it rides the line between all three without ever falling into any of them too hard. 

As a Hulu standalone it was a bit odd, as a Hulu show on Disney+ it's perfect. All episodes are available either way; Season 2 is due out in 2024.

There are times when one assumes a show to be bad simply because of the place it landed or how it premieres. Such was the case with The Lazarus Project, a Sky UK series that wound up on TNT alongside the godawful Miracle Workers and then was delayed six months with almost no warning less than 48 hours before its premiere in January 2023 due to the Warner Brothers-Discovery merger creation of Max. Imagine our surprise and delight to discover the Paapa Essiedu-starrer was a propulsive sci-fi timey-wimey thrill ride.

Essiedu has already proved his mettle in The Capture Season 2 (a lost gem from 2022 hiding on Peacock). The Lazarus Project sets him up as George, a man who loses the love of his life to a stupid accident during the reset of the timeline to prevent her (and the rest of humanity) from dying in a plague. Mad with grief, he breaks all the laws of time and physics and reality to get her back... only to discover she's not actually all that grateful, and their relationship dissolves. And that's not even the biggest twist! 

All episodes of The Lazarus Project Season 1 are streaming on Max. Season 2 already aired in the U.K. and is expected to come back to TNT (and then stream on Max) in 2024.

When Masterpiece announced it was taking Tom Jones, an all-white boys-will-be-boys romp from 1749, and giving it a 21st-century update, the question was how could it possibly manage? And yet, the result was delightful. By telling it from the point of view of Tom's love interest, Sophia Western (Sophie Wilde), the story was given a new angle, assisted by Sophia's character being explicitly reimagined as a Black orphan who'd come to England from the Caribbean, and her maid Honor (Pearl Mackie), a worldly woman from the same region, turning much of the book's perspective on its head.

Wilde's co-star, Solly McLeod, was also a delight as Jones and his foil, Hannah Waddingham, as Lady Bellaston. Between the new perspective, McLeod and Wilde as breakouts, and Mackie and Waddingham having a great time in period dress, everything about this four-part limited series is worth your time and the smile it'll bring. It turns out that sometimes the old classics can get a good refresh.

All four episodes of Tom Jones are streaming on PBS Passport, which is the streaming service that comes with a mug and tote bag when you join your local station as a member, and the PBS Masterpiece Channel via Amazon.

The 2020s have been littered with rebooting series that are ten, twenty, and thirty years old, where the characters from the original come back, and the new episodes acknowledge the passage of time. And yet, somehow Happy Valley's return, almost a decade after it originally premiered in 2014, not only felt fresh, it felt earned. It helped that the trio of main leads, Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran, and James Norton, have thriving careers (as does writer Sally Wainwright), so this return was clearly no cash grab by anyone. It also helped that Wainwright's reason to return now, and not before, is that she finally had something to say.

Another delight, original child star Rhys Connah as Ryan Cawood, now all grown up and having this series as a launching pad to his next career phase. But perhaps the best reason to return to Happy Valley this year: watching it bring full circle the changes in police procedurals that is spawned in 2014, the gritty angry, street-eye view of law enforcement and the daily blurred lines of right and wrong, and the bright highlights of the times when they are so clearly demarcated. So many series strive to land what Wainwright makes look easy.

All three seasons of Happy Valley are now streaming on Acorn TV, AMC+, and Sundance Now, at least as long as they exist.

When Amazon released the original Good Omens back in 2019, starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, it was one of those lightning-in-a-bottle scenarios. Beloved British book, co-authored by beloved British writers Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett, done as a love of love by the former for the latter, starring a roster of nerdy actors who all grew up loving the novel. So when Amazon declared there would be a Season 2, fans were understandably....wary.

However, Tennant and Sheen's two-man best friend campaign on YouTube during the pandemic with Staged helped alleviate a lot of those fears. And Gaiman's hints that Season 2 would make good on all the queerbaiting Season 1 had been able to add that were inherent in the novel but never explicitly stated had many fans' hopes up. But the resulting season surpassed all expectations, giving fussy angel Aziraphale and loose-living demon Crowley the odd couple romance we always wanted for them, only for it to come crashing down. By the time the strike ended, the campaign for Season 3 was practically an internet phenomenon. 

Don't worry, there will be. Until it comes out, Good Omens Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Every year, one or two shows stand head and shoulders above everything else I watch. Last year, I awarded those Best of the Year Awards to BritBox's Sherwood and Star Wars' Andor. I don't necessarily give them to British or British-ish series, but BritBox claims it again with The Confessions of Frannie Langton.

Since the debut of Sanditon in 2019, period piece series set in the Regency and Victorian eras have been struggling to find ways to be inclusive, with varying levels of success, though all with caveats. The Gilded Age, for example, has a great story about Peggy Scott, inappropriately squashed up against a frivolous story about hats and capes; its LGBTQ+ stories have more heft. Bridgerton went full fairytale, which gave it license to be false, but then tried to explain itself anyway, which led to failure; its LGBTQ+ attempts are laughable. The Buccaneers tried to insist it didn't see race (Really) and didn't try for anything else. Even Miss Scarlet and the Duke managed better than that with Rupert and the Clementines.

Enter The Confessions of Frannie Langton, which nails every single part of this without even trying. Based on Sara Collins' award-winning novel of the same name, the Georgian set series is one part mystery, one part LGBTQ+ love story, and one part exploration of England's uncomfortable relationship with the way it treated the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean nations after it claimed to have ended the slave trade. The series has everything you're looking for, all in one place, making it look easy.

All episodes of The Confessions of Frannie Langton are streaming on BritBox.

(*If you're curious what my other "Best Show Across the Board" is for 2023, it was the final season of Succession.)