Watching Without Walls

Watching Without Walls TV’s streaming revolution has opened up a global grab bag of viewing options.

- Joy Press

Once upon a time, being an Anglophile was a lonely business. Back in the era when “streaming” referred to trickles of water, fans of British television relied on PBS for its steady drip of ornate Masterpiece Theatre costume dramas and antic Monty Python episodes.

Public television peddled a kind of self-improvement myth—the notion that regular exposure to British accents could levitate you above the American masses. Even a 1970s Brit-com like Are You Being Served?—set in a London department store and oozing with innuendo—was treated as Noël Coward–level wit and refinement by PBS viewers long after it originally aired across the pond.

For most of TV history, broadcast networks simply assumed foreign fare would not appeal to average-Joe viewers. Rather than import series, they revamped British successes into something more American-shaped: All in the Family, Three’s Company, The Office, Shameless, House of Cards, and Veep were all adapted from Brit hits.