Prime Video’s streaming service add-on sale has some very tempting BritBox deals right now, cutting the cost of watching some of the finest shows from the UK. And that means I’m going to recommend you watch shows from three distinct genres: crime, crime and more crime. Because if there’s one thing we Brits love to make and love to watch, it’s a cop show.
It’s fair to say that typical British cop shows aren’t like typical American ones. That’s partly because most British cops don’t carry guns, although we’re going to highlight an important exception to that in a moment.
It’s also because a lot of the UK is pretty quiet crime-wise, so the writers can’t just fill the docks with RPG-armed goons and send cops busting through warehouse doors in an armored humvee (although we do still have the odd, quite mad action cop, such as Idis Elba’s Luther). The viewers would quite rightly find that ridiculous and tut into their teacups.
What these shows have instead of big explosions is great writing, fantastic acting and dense plotting – and that makes them not just must-watch, but must-binge TV shows.
Blue Lights (2 seasons)
Britain has more police dramas than it does people: at the last census there were 69 million people living in Britain and 73 billion cop shows for them to watch. But Blue Lights is different, primarily because of its setting: it’s set among the ‘peelers’ of the Police Service of Northern Ireland in Belfast, a city where The Troubles continue to cast a long shadow.
BritBox is currently showing the first two seasons of the drama; the third is currently airing on the BBC and it’s the weaker of the three. Seasons one and two are the best so far.
The show does a great job of portraying the tensions that make policing in Belfast very different than policing in England, and of showing the toll that can take on younger officers in particular. And as someone whose family hails from Belfast, I think it does a great job of nailing the often very funny way people from Northern Ireland wind each other up: there’s lots of warmth and humor here, as well as heart-stopping stress. Think of it as a slightly more soap-y, Belfast take on The Wire and you’ve got the idea.
Shetland (9 seasons)
Based on the best-selling thrillers by Ann Cleeves, the award-winning cop drama Shetland starts Douglas Henshall as DI Jimmy Pérez, a policeman on the most northerly part of the British Isles: Shetland is an archipelago located over 100 miles north-east of the Scottish mainland, where it’s lashed by strong winds and heavy seas.
Scots viewers (hello!) had fun with the inconsistencies in the show – such as everybody on the island having a Glasgow accent, not a Shetland one, because Glasgow was where a lot of the interiors were filmed, and Dougie Henshall’s character having a Spanish surname while Henshall is about as Spanish as a haggis wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes – and the departure of the lead actor after season seven coincided with a noticeable drop in quality. But at its best Shetland is a gripping, carefully plotted police drama with a winning cast of characters and some absolutely beautiful location filming.
Agatha Christie’s Poirot (12 seasons)
And now for a very different kind of detective. David Suchet plays the Belgian investigator Hercule Poirot in twelve seasons of gentle but gripping crime mysteries.
Set in the roaring twenties and glamorous 1930s with locations all around the world, Poirot is a feast for the eyes (and especially fun for fashion fans: these were decades of delightful dressing up) and was nominated for multiple BAFTAs, the British equivalent of Emmy awards, as well as many other awards. It’s the televisual equivalent of a really nice meal in a really nice and rather high-class old restaurant, a show to savor as a little treat after a long day.
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