What is it about the British that make their crime dramas so amazing. It is very hard to define.
 
I don't mean stiff like Midsummer Murders either. I mean the serious stuff. Like 'The Fall', 'The Five' (OMG!!!) and just watched 'London Spy'.  Seriously fantastic.  'Luther' comes to mind as well.  Also 'The Secret'  They are all just so tense.  There is so much tension in the air it is ridiculous.  Even the music scores are amazing and nothing like anything else as well.
 
I know some of you Americans might find this hard to believe.  The US crime stuff is just not doing it for me.  They all are so good looking, superhuman and it is just plain wrong, in my opinion only of course.  I know the Americans can make a decent movie occasionally.  Recently saw 'Captain Fantastic' and just loved it.  But most of the time it is all just about the animators and special effects.
 
I hope some of our British forum users will chime in here.  Interesting is that our Australian crime dramas are getting better all the time and glad to see we are following the British model.
 
I just love England and hope I get to see it before I die.  Mind you I would not mind visiting America either.  For me Nashville holds the most attraction maybe followed by New York.  I have a feeling Nashville might be the centre of the musical universe!  I am also into electronic music in a big way too and I have heard it is all happening in Hamburg.
 
Can any of you Brits recommend any other TV series like the ones mentioned above.  I just cant get enough!!! We have got them all here in Australia.

My wife would agree, she records them all! On PBS and Netflix :) She's Norwegian so there is some of the Sky TV heritage, I think...

I still have not decided whether I am watching a biased sample of British fare, i. e. the stuff that PBS buys, or whether it is truly better. I expect it is the latter. U. S. television seems to eschew the concept that acting is to be cultivated in this genre. It also seems to find reasonably coherent writing to be superfluous as well, which may set the acting bar pretty low to begin with. On the other hand crashing expensive looking automobiles at high speeds with lots of pyrotechnics following needlessly extended car chases photographed from helicopters seems to be a strong hand for the U. S. industry. The few reasonably good US crime dramas seem to have come from pay per view channels. And of course staffing entire police forces with drop dead gorgeous spokesmodels of either sex is definitely where the US excels. 

I wouldn't quote it as "the British model" as such. the nordic countries of late have had a big impact esp. stylised.
even the U.S. HBO stuff has had an impact , people still talk about soprano's.. and more recent things like dexter, breaking bad a lot.
 
there is a cop drama "Line of Duty" that was on for 3 series, that you might like. basically internal affairs and in each series it was "is the main character a dodgy cop or not" scenario.
 
"The night manager" was decent enough also.
 
I liked the UK version of "Life on Mars" (thats old now) maybe due to some of the things featured , as it was based in 1973.. the follow on , ashes to ashes I didn't like too much (woman in that is better in line of duty I thought)
 
there is a UK version of " Wallander" which originally is swedish.
 
Happy Valley was on a while back and another thing "good cop" which I recall.
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/programmes/genres/drama/crime/all
 
has a list of things and films that well come under "crime" I guess.
 
you might want to look into Dr Martin Fido's stuff.. he used to do radio shows in London about famous, sorry infamous folk.. oddly an ex g/f was living years later, on the same road as one of them.
 
people on the "digital spy" forum are stupidly clued up on this stuff.
 
 

Thanks Fog for your thoughts and yes I totally agree with the European model being very similar as well.  Love all that stuff too.  Recently watched 'Paris' and just loved it too.  Takes a little while to get going but soon draws you in bigtime.
 
I do like some US cop shows of course.  (NYPD Blue, SVU and even Blue Bloods at times too, much more real for me) I know this is not a cop show but just loved 'Suits' as well.  I cannot believe how good that was.  Somehow they managed to get that same tension into every episode.  It was almost exhausting for me.  But I loved it!

My dad keeps raving about an Italian TV show that's shown on the BBC called Inspector Montalbano. You might want to give that a watch if you don't mind subtitles. I couldn't find it to watch online but I did find the theme on YouTube and it's a really fantastic piece of music. 
 
Here's a playlist of some of the music. It's really distinctive and evocative. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/w...oRfMwgOXvVRU6PsWfjoeHR

A vote for Montalbano from me, too.
My explanation of the British quality is the roots. For decades the British series were, and partly still are today,
based on very popular books. That means the characters, plots and sets are carefully built ready for the screenwriters to start adapting. Also, the book being originally created by one person during many years makes the fundamental structures fluent and solid compared to modern TV-writing which usually means a group of writers.
This has created a strong tradition which gives new writers good ground to bounce from.
 
Happy Valley is the one that has impressed me lately.
 
I do like Swedish and Danish stuff as well. The most successful Swedish ones (Wallander, Beck) are also all based
on books that have been very, very popular for decades.

Love 'The Fall' (series 3 starts on Thursday btw), 'Line Of Duty' was excellent as well. I think the UK crime shows were a bit 'cosy' a few years back, but started to take their lead from Scandinavian shows in terms of mood and tension. 'The Bridge', 'The Killing' (which has been remade in the US), 'Wallander', but also French shows like 'Spiral' and latterly 'Braquo'. I don't mind subtitles at all, so I've found plenty of good stuff, even an Icelandic one called 'Trapped', very good.
 
Have to say though, the first season of 'True Detective' is the best crime series I've seen lately, the performances by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughty were completely absorbing. Strangely I couldn't get into season 2 at all.

Forgot 'Happy Valley', but I see Kalle mentioned it, brilliant stuff.

I don't watch a lot of television but British and Scandinavian crime dramas are something I do like to watch. Check out Shetland, one of my favourite UK ones.

And if you want an alternate view, try the film Hot Fuzz lampooning several UK and US police shows, Midsommer in particular.