First of all, congratulations. You did it. Two-hundred and fifty years ago, you adopted the Declaration of Independence and ditched Great Britain. You put your foot down. And you were right to do it. We were toxic and we weren’t making you happy.
I’d love to say we learned, healed, and grew from the experience, but honestly, we didn’t. In the interest of transparency, we were down bad for some time. Oh, we carried on bossing other countries around for a while, doing despicable things. We pottered around with our little inventions, like steam engines, the National Health Service, and the web. We tried to keep ourselves busy, not dwell on it. But the truth is, we were always four or five gin-and-tonics away from texting “u up?”
Don’t get us wrong, we’re comforted by the knowledge that we’ve managed to rebuild our trust with you since then. Even now, did you see? Look, it’s Harry Styles. Tom Holland. Dua Lipa. John Oliver. Sorry about James Corden and Piers Morgan, but we’ve still got something to offer, haven’t we? Perhaps you can admit we have a place in your heart these days. No pressure. Just when (and if) you’re ready. We’ll be here. Probably. There’s a lot going on, actually. We’re on our sixth prime minister in 10 years, with a seventh on the way. But that’s not your fault. We just can’t find much to be happy about anymore. We’re restless. It happens when you’re on an island.
Truth be told, we’ve become quite preoccupied with self-pity as a country most days. Moaning has become a national pastime. We love nothing more than complaining. Even on the happiest day of our lives, we’ll find something. And when we’re desperate, we always have the weather to blame, because there are only about three days a year here when the weather’s perfectly fine. Even then, we can check the forecast, see a dark cloud in the future, and say, “Ah, this won’t last.” Great Britain has embraced the role of Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Our TV often reflects our despair, too. There are the long-running soaps where we watch terrible things happening to regular people, especially on Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year? Not on our watch, mate. Even our sitcoms can drown in melancholia. We don’t deserve laughter at the end of the day; we need to remind ourselves of that.
To celebrate your independence, America, here are five TV shows you can watch whenever you even think about picking up the phone and saying “I miss us.” Set those boundaries and stick to them. Preserve your peace.
EastEnders
EastEnders has been broadcasting here on the BBC since 1985. At the moment, the beloved soap opera airs four evenings a week, exploring the daily lives of fictional characters in London’s East End. Their lives are a bit more eventful than ours, to put it mildly, but the writers manage to pack a lot of misery into those half-hour slots and we definitely get our money’s worth. Family breakdowns, crime, illness, addiction, betrayal, financial struggles, death …absolutely relentless suffering. And no one’s come to represent all of that quite like the character of Ian Beale, portrayed on and off by actor Adam Woodyatt.
Beale has been married at least five times. One of his wives hired a hitman to get rid of him. Another tried to poison him. He’s had numerous failed businesses. His daughter was murdered by his son. When it all got too much, he had a full breakdown. Ian Beale’s misery is so iconic that, if we ever abolish the monarchy, his visage will be on the shortlist to replace them on our currency.
Peep Show
Humiliation. Moral compromise. Social failure. God, we loved Peep Show, a sitcom following the antics of Mark Corrigan (David Mitchell) and Jeremy “Jez” Usbourne (Robert Webb), two men in pursuit of happiness, trying to be people they can never be, whether that’s a corporate high-flyer or just simply “cool.”
Ultimately, all their toxic friendship does is cause each of them to spiral deeper into their own misery, chasing ideal outcomes they can never achieve and sabotaging each other along the way, with every disappointment a realistic turn of events. We spent nine seasons of TV with these raging narcissists and could have probably watched nine more.
Utopia
Utopia aired only 12 episodes between 2013 and 2014, but it became a real cult gem. Bleak and violent, Dennis Kelly’s thriller series finds a bunch of comic book enthusiasts becoming preoccupied with “The Utopia Experiments,” a graphic novel that seems to have predicted terrible events in the past, and also a rumored sequel that will predict some in the future, all while a shadowy organization uses extreme violence to get their hands on it.
Keying into the country’s paranoia that we’re all being surveilled and controlled (we can’t let you guys have all the fun!) Utopia hit a nerve during an era when we weren’t quite sure how bad things would get. It also tapped into our tendency to blame those working against us in the shadows for failing to inspire meaningful change when we see a dark future ahead.
Black Mirror
Before Black Mirror went to Netflix, Charlie Brooker’s anthology show kicked off on Channel 4, where it gave us some of the most upsetting and darkly comedic British stories about where technology might be heading. “The National Anthem” saw a fictional prime minister having sex with a pig live on TV. The pre-Meta glasses “The Entire History of You” let people replay their memories with horrible consequences. “The Waldo Moment” explored our mistrust and apathy toward our own politicians.
To begin with, Black Mirror just leaned much harder into UK-specific social commentary. That would change, but for anyone who wants to understand just how easy it would be for us to ruin everything given enough of a shove, the first two seasons of Brooker’s show are a good place to start.
One Foot In the Grave
When Victor Meldrew (Richard Wilson) is forced into early retirement at the start of One Foot In the Grave, he ends up dealing with a seemingly endless string of problems and mishaps that he often makes much worse by getting incensed about them. As he copes with one misfortune or awkward coincidence after another, he inevitably also tests the patience of his long-suffering wife, Margaret (Annette Crosbie), who desperately tries to maintain a sense of calm as he grows increasingly outraged by his issues.
We won’t always admit it, but there’s a Victor Meldrew inside many of us, not just waiting to emerge, but almost daring life to provoke. Defaulting at first to a polite British demeanor, any random minor inconvenience can still set us off. The character’s catchphrase “I do not believe it!” caught on quickly when the show first hit the air in 1990, for good reason. We love to have something to moan about. It helps give our lives purpose.
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