You might have seen the original BBC version of "The Office," but have you seen the sketch show "A Bit of Fry & Laurie" with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry?
Hulu, Netflix look to UK
British TV programming has become a solid performer for the digital services, which are bringing in more.
By JAKE COYLE
June 29, 2011 at 8:47PM
What about Steve Coogan's talk-show parody, "Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge"? Or how about the 2003 political thriller "State of Play"?
Catching these British shows in the United States used to mean hunting down sometimes hard-to-find DVDs. But in digital realms, divisions between American and British TV worlds are fast dissolving.
Netflix and Hulu have made international television more accessible than ever. Now, one's favorite "new" show is often phrased as a "discovery." And often, viewers' interests lead beyond borders.
Broadcast television, of course, offers many cable stations from abroad. But in the vast digital repositories of Hulu and Netflix, shows aren't segregated by country of origin. Instead, programs are discovered and rediscovered through word of mouth and recommendations from friends, often through social media or the sites' recommendation engines.
U.S. networks have long looked across the Atlantic for programming to copy -- for example, franchised hits such as "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and attempted remakes such as "Coupling." Many shows also end up on BBC America or PBS, such as the recent, acclaimed upstairs-downstairs drama "Downton Abbey."
But often, such hits as "Downton Abbey" send viewers back to Netflix, where they scour for more top-notch British costume drama. Viewers need not wait for what often turns out to be dumbed-down, Americanized remakes, but can instead seek out the original series.
Hulu is attempting to make a splash this summer by streaming three British series not before seen in the United States.
"Misfits," a comedy about community service-sentenced teenagers turned into superheroes by an electrical storm, premiered on Hulu last week. The Vuguru-produced Web series "The Booth at the End," a moralistic thriller about a man who grants wishes for a price, will premiere July 11. "Whites," a comedy about a country house hotel chef, debuts July 20.
"We'd much rather find a show that a small to medium audience loves to death than a show that a broader audience might kind of like," says Andy Forssell, Hulu's senior vice president of content acquisition and distribution.
Word of mouth
Hulu earlier noticed a surprisingly strong response to British shows such as the cult comedy "Spaced" by Simon Pegg, which ran from 1999 to 2001. Also popular on Hulu were the 2004-06 hospital sitcom "Green Wing" and the 2003-10 sitcom "Peep Show."
"They're shows that spread by word of mouth, spread virally online, and they really just punched above what we thought their weight class was on Hulu," Forssell says.
Similar findings also led Netflix to look abroad.
"House of Cards," a political thriller starring Ian Richardson as a plotting Parliament politician, was a sensation for the BBC when it ran in the 1990s. Netflix is paying producer Media Rights Capital for the exclusive rights to distribute a U.S. remake of the series. The new "House of Cards," to star Kevin Spacey and have director David Fincher as executive producer, will stream exclusively on Netflix beginning next year.
