The British telly scene is in a right state, isn’t it? Over the past year or so, it’s been one cancellation after another, leaving viewers proper gutted as show after show gets the chop before its time. What promised to be gems have been unceremoniously binned, often with barely a backward glance from the bean-counters upstairs.
Take Extraordinary on Disney+ — that gloriously sweary, south-London superhero comedy where everyone gets a power at 18 except our hapless Jen. Critics raved, fans adored its daft brilliance, yet somehow it never quite pulled in the numbers to satisfy the streaming overlords. Two riotous series of inventive chaos, and poof — gone, no third season in sight.
Then there’s ITV’s Passenger, a properly oddball affair: a grim northern crime yarn laced with supernatural chills, part Happy Valley, part Stranger Things. Andrew Buchan gave it his all, reviews were decent, but it never quite hooked the big Saturday-night crowd the channel was banking on. One series, finito.
Satire’s had a rough ride too. Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes’ The Franchise on HBO/Sky took a merciless scalpel to the superhero-movie sausage factory — meta jokes about franchise fatigue that felt a tad too on-the-nose for comfort. Impeccable pedigree, sharp as a tack, yet it struggled to break through the noise. No second outing for that one.
Even the old reliables aren’t safe. Sky’s Brassic bowed out after seven gloriously chaotic series of northern working-class mayhem, leaving Michelle Keegan’s legion of fans in bits. One of the last bastions of unapologetic lad-and-lass telly, and now it’s history.
Over on ITV, McDonald & Dodds — that gentle Bath-set detective double-act that quietly became Sunday-night sofa fodder — got the axe after four series as the figures slipped. Comfort viewing, apparently, doesn’t cut it any more.
Daytime hasn’t escaped the cull either. Stephen Fry’s revival of Jeopardy! on ITV, all polite brain-box battles and erudite banter, vanished after just two series without so much as a trumpet voluntary. Channel 4’s cheeky puppet escapade No Strings Attached divided opinion so sharply it was quietly dropped after one go.
The BBC, too, has been wielding the axe on its quirkier comedies and factual hybrids that once might have been nurtured; these days, budgets are tight, scrutiny is fierce, and patience is in short supply.
What ties this sorry parade together isn’t a dearth of quality — many of these were among the boldest, funniest British telly in ages — but a merciless new world order. Streamers chase global mega-hits, terrestrial channels hunt young viewers and instant ratings spikes, and nobody’s got the wallet or the nerve for slow-burners, cult favourites or anything that doesn’t scream “viral” from day one.
The upshot? Schedules that feel ever thinner, safer, blander. Viewers are left with that nagging suspicion that the great British tradition of shared stories, daft laughs and proper risks is being quietly sidelined in favour of content that must justify itself in spreadsheets rather than in the national psyche.
A few stalwarts limp on — Doctor Who soldiers bravely ahead amid shifting co-productions — but the roll-call of “what might have beens” lengthens by the month. We’ll tut, we’ll sigh, we’ll reach for the remote as usual. Yet in the spaces between the endless baking contests and celebrity panel shows, a little less originality, a little less daring, is slipping away from our screens. And that, frankly, feels like rather more than just another scheduling tweak.
