The Best British TV Shows On Netflix Right Now

The British are coming! The British are coming!

Good news for all you Anglophiles out there: the British are already here. If you're a fan of British television, there is a huge selection on Netflix to choose from. Factual, informational programs are the bread and butter (tea and scones?) of British television, but their narrative series also have a massive audience. Tim Davie, head of BBC Worldwide's commercial programming says this of British television's strengths: "[We] trust the audience to grasp complex ideas and understand irony. I think that we are masters of the subtle and the curious and there is certainly a place for that in the global TV market."

Police dramas. Cheeky comedies. Thrilling historical fiction. All the baking you could ever want. We don't have any distinct criteria for this list, like a show "must have aired x number of episodes on the BBC" to qualify. If Netflix lists it as "British" then, by George, you've got it! Here are some of our favorite British shows on Netflix.

If you're itching for a good mystery, you can't go wrong with Broadchurch. There are three seasons of the police drama available on Netflix, and the intriguing plot will keep you guessing until the very end.

The first two seasons of Broadchurch actually deal with the same crime — the first is about solving the case, and the second season deals with the ripple effect of how everyone in this quiet town is affected by the gruesome revelations. The third season features a totally new case and several new characters. It feels a bit disjointed from the first two seasons, but ultimately comes to a satisfying conclusion.

The story of Broadchurch is great, but it's the cast that will keep you coming back. David Tennant and Olivia Colman star as the detectives tasked with solving the mystery of a local child in a small, tightly-knit community, and plenty of other familiar faces show up. Look for Jodie Whittaker, Andrew Buchan, Arthur Darville and Matthew Graville as some of the other familiar faces who make wonderful dramatic turns on Broadchurch.

If you're really looking for a way to make someone fear the future (or the present, really), you can't go wrong with Black Mirror. This Twilight Zone-esque anthology series tells all sorts of mind-bending stories about the pitfalls of technology. Let's just say you'll be keeping a close watch on your Alexa after only a few minutes.

Despite the frequent darkness of its technological tales, there's a lot of other fun to be had with Black Mirror too. The episodes are mostly self-contained, but their are subtle connections between many of them, offering viewers plenty of Easter eggs to watch out for. Since each story is free to focus on a new setting, Black Mirror also has amazing casting — stars like Jon Hamm, Daniel Kaluuya, Jesse Plemons, Anthony Mackie, Bryce Dallas Howard, Miley Cyrus, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II all appear across various episodes.

Black Mirror is a bit all over the place — some episodes are scary, others uplifting, and still others completely disturbing — but it's fantastically shot, written and acted. You can't go wrong.

Cillian Murphy doesn't get nearly enough credit for being a magnetic actor, and Peaky Blinders is one of the best showcases of his talent. The series is a violent crime drama that follows the Shelby crime family in early 1900s Birmingham. Murphy plays the head of the family, Tommy Shelby, as the gang navigates betrayal, rival criminals, and zealous lawmen.

Peaky Blinders is a bleak, sprawling gangster story, and it features plenty of the hallmarks of the best gangster films. The writing and acting are both phenomenal — besides Murphy, you'll also see actors like Sam Neill, Tom Hardy, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Helen McCrory. Peaky Blinders has also received plenty of accolades for its costuming and production design, so fans of pretty television will certainly appreciate the world the series creates.

Peaky Blinders isn't the most uplifting show in the world — like many gangster epics, it can be a tense affair where the audience is just waiting for someone else to make a bad decision. If you don't mind being stuck in the mire with some scoundrels, this is one of the best places to be. There are currently five seasons on Netflix.

If dark, gritty, or mature are not among the adjectives to describe the type of show you're looking for, then take a swing to the opposite side of things with Shaun the Sheep: Adventures From Mossy Bottom. The stop-motion style will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to animation over the years. That's because Shaun the Sheep is a spin-off of Wallace and Gromit. This series is a joy to look at, with no small amount of charm coming from how expressive and emotive its characters are.

There is almost no dialogue in Shaun the Sheep: Adventures From Mossy Bottom. The animals all make distinctive sounds, and human characters usually just murmur or sigh to express their emotions. Even though this approach sounds simplistic, it means that the show's characters' appeal is universal. Even though it is a kids' show, Adventures From Mossy Bottom is clever enough to entertain adults.

If you want a show that everyone in the family can appreciate equally, this is one of your best bets. There's a single season on Netflix, and a Shaun the Sheep movie if you want more.

Maybe we're just suckers for the writing team of Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, who also brought Sherlock and some of the best seasons of Doctor Who to light, but their 2020 take on Dracula is just too much fun. The only issue with it is that there just isn't enough — like Sherlock, episodes are about an hour and a half, but there are only three of them as of this writing. Any fan of supernatural horror will love this retelling of the classic bloodsucker tale.

Like Sherlock and its source material, Dracula turns just enough of its modern eye to the Gothic horror tale to make it fresh. Even if you're a connoisseur of vampire stories, there will be some new things here to take in. Claes Bang, who plays the title role, has some stiff competition in the annals of film and television, but he brings so much energy and charisma to his performance as Dracula that you will not forget him anytime soon.

We also can't get by without mentioning Dolly Wells, who stars alongside Bang and absolutely kills it with her performance. Don't miss this one.

Fans of sarcastic, absurdist humor like Community and Arrested Development will find a lot to like with The IT Crowd. It looks on the surface like a typical workplace comedy, but there's a lot going on under the hood that makes it more akin to the awkward, ridiculous style of setups that fans of those shows will appreciate.

The IT Crowd takes place at a tech company run by a buffoon. The boss appoints a new hire (Katherine Parkinson) as the head of his IT department, despite the fact that she is totally ignorant of computers. She has to manage the awkward relationships between the other workers at the company (played by amazing comic actors like Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, and Noel Fielding), and the situations they get into are horribly awkward and hilarious.

If you want to know whether The IT Crowd is up your alley, check out the second season episode "The Work Outing." If that type of humor doesn't get you laughing, then you may want to look elsewhere. For the rest of us, there's plenty more where that came from.

It's a crying shame that Crazyhead got just one season — only six episodes of a great supernatural comedy that many outlets, like Vox, have called a "British Buffy." Still, those six episodes are absolutely worth the watch. Besides, you just never know what could happen. Enough of an audience might bring back Amy and Raquel for more demon-battling goodness.

Here's the premise: Amy (Cara Theobold) is a woman in her early 20s working in a bowling alley. She also happens to be what's known as a "seer," someone who has the ability to sense demons hiding among humanity. She soon encounters a much more badass seer named Raquel (Susan Wokoma), and the two set about hunting and destroying every demon they encounter. It's funny, it's subversive and it's got some excellent effects and fight choreography. About the only thing it doesn't have is... more than six episodes.

It's too bad — watch an episode and you'll be hard pressed to think of a reason why this show didn't take off. An extraordinarily fun and kinetic six-episode series makes for a great weekend binge, though.

We just have to point out that Netflix made a huge mistake when they changed the name of this series to Lovesick; it was originally called Scrotal Recall, and that's just an objectively better name. Despite the fact that Lovesick sounds way less interesting, the show still stands as one of the best modern British sitcoms, featuring likable characters and relatable scenarios, all centered around one awkward premise.

Lovesick is about a group of twenty-something housemates living in Glasgow. The central character, a man named Dylan, learns he has chlamydia and starts seeking out his ex-lovers in order to let them know. It's mostly told through flashback to show how the characters have changed and evolved over time, helping to set up many of the jokes with some clever cutbacks and setups. As of this writing, there are three seasons on Netflix, and you can definitely tell (in a positive way) when the show jumped networks between the first two seasons.

Lovesick is often hilarious and always clever, and its fairly realistic take on friendship and the world at large makes for some extremely relatable situations. It nails that cringe-y comedy that British television does so well.

Olivia Colman is a treasure, and her talent is instantly recognizable anytime she's on your screen. Few shows or movies give her a chance to showcase her talents more than Flowers. Julian Barrett of The Mighty Boosh joins her in this incredibly dark comedy.

Flowers is a remarkably weird show that is tough to describe. It focuses on the well-to-do Flowers family — Barrett plays a children's book author who is dealing with some severe depression. His wife, played by Colman, is convinced that he is having an affair with his illustrator. Their twin children, an inventor and a gothic musician, struggle with their own hangups. It's seriously odd and uncomfortable, but it's also frequently hysterical. It also touches on mental illness in a way that not many shows can, especially comedies.

If you've ever seen The Mighty Boosh or other British absurdist comedy, you probably have a pretty good idea whether or not Flowers will fit your style. If you're unsure, load it up — you'll probably know in the first few minutes (in which a suicide attempt goes wrong) whether it'll be up your alley.

Top Boy is one of those great crime shows that imparts moral lessons without descending into preachiness or obvious allegory. It's a show about all the shades of grey we live in, where the law's bad guys are often society's good guys and vice versa. It's just a great take on the classic crime drama, set against the background of the East London drug trade.

Top Boy follows a group of low level criminals as they try to better themselves and survive in the cutthroat underworld of modern day London. Dushane (Ashley Walters) and Sully (Kane Robinson) are absolutely dynamic characters, played with serious intensity and believability. They aren't perfect, but their reasoning and development are always understandable, and you can't help but sympathize with them even as they make some absolutely boneheaded decisions. Top Boy is not for the faint of heart, and yet it's a show that's super easy to binge, as each episode will leave you wanting more.

If you decide to sit down with Top Boy, you should start with Top Boy: Summerhouse. That's the title given to the original two BBC seasons, whereas Top Boy is actually the third season (after Netflix brought the show back).