Remember that old saying, “There are 100 channels, and nothing’s on?” Well, the opposite is true nowadays. That there’s an abundance of high-quality TV shows is both a reward and a punishment, as it’s tough to find the right program to watch amid a sea of content. And that’s just British television!
From the BBC to Channel 4 to ITV, British television is in its second Golden Age, and BritBox has most of the good stuff. The streamer has hundreds of comedies, dramas, period pieces, soap operas, morning chat programs, and reality series at its disposal, and the following 10 shows are the best it has to offer in 2025.
Interested in more great British programming? Then check out the best British TV shows on Netflix, 3 great BritBox shows you should watch right now, and the 5 most anticipated British crime shows of 2025.
The Inheritance (2023)
Why is a reading of a will so dramatic? Tons of movies and shows use it as a plot device, and it almost always works. That’s especially true with The Inheritance, a modern riff on William Shakespeare’s King Lear. It’s no spoiler to reveal Dennis Watson, the elderly man at the center of the plot, turns up dead in the opening episode. His three grown children — Daniel, Chloe, and Sian — are shocked, but not nearly as much as when they all found out they’d been cut from dear dad’s will and deprived of a hefty cash windfall.
Why were they deprived of their rightful inheritance when they all seemingly had a decent, if strained, relationship with their father? And did Dennis really die of natural causes, or was it foul play? Across its four episodes, The Inheritance dishes up juicy family melodrama and a central mystery that will keep you hooked.
Joan (2024)
Joan Hannington is a woman with few options. Still only in her 20s, she has a 6-year-old daughter, Kelly, whom she adores, and a husband, Boise, whom she loathes. Her life is seemingly over before it’s even begun, except Joan decides one day to change things up: She’ll become a jewel thief.
At first, she gets all the fur coats and diamond earrings she could ever desire, but her new taste for crime has a cost, and soon, her secret life as a thief threatens not only her but her entire family as well. Game of Thrones vet Sophie Turner stars as the title character in this acclaimed drama, which is based on actual events. There really was a Joan Hannington, and she really did become “The Godmother” of the British criminal underworld. Her story proves the adage that life is sometimes stranger than fiction — and more interesting as a result.
What Remains (2013)
What Remains has an intriguing premise: A dead body is found in the top floor apartment of a tenement building in downtown London. To make matters worse, the body, which used to be a young woman named Melissa (Jessica Gunning), had been there for two years. Why had no one noticed a rotting corpse in their building? And why did no one from Melissa’s family or friends report her missing?
That’s what Detective Len Harper (David Threlfall) wants to find out as he interviews the other occupants of the building, which include a man and his pregnant partner, a married couple who work as designers, and a middle-aged teacher who secretly shares his flat with a younger companion. All of them have something to hide, but who had a role in Jessica’s murder? What Remains features a bevy of future stars, including Looking‘s Russell Tovey and Baby Reindeer‘s Gunning, in a four-part mystery that will keep you guessing right up until the end.
The Responder (2022-present)
Chris Carson isn’t having the best time of his life. He’s a glorified night security guard following an illustrious career as an inspector, his current Liverpool apartment is depressing as hell, and he has to go to therapy to deal with some past trauma that’s destroyed his personal life. To make matters worse, he’s been assigned a new partner, Rachel, whose sunny optimism annoys him to no end.
When he tries to save an innocent man from a drug deal that has gone terribly wrong, Chris sees an opportunity to turn his life around. But can he escape from the sins of his past? The Responder is both a great British crime procedural and a fascinating portrait of a man slowly piecing his life back together. As Carson, Martin Freeman, best known for his comedic work in Love Actually and the British version of The Office, gives a terrific performance that’s worth watching the show for him alone.
Age Before Beauty (2018)
Manchester is famously known as the hometown of The Beatles, but it also serves as the location for some pretty wonderful British shows. One of them is Age Before Beauty, a six-episode series that follows the trials and tribulations of Bel (Polly Walker), a fortysomething woman who decides to become a business owner. The business is the family salon, which has seen better days and is the source of inner family conflict that Bel is caught in the middle of.
Life could be a drag for Bel, but she is aided by her loving husband of 25 years, Wesley (James Murray), and her best friend, Teddy (Grantchester‘s Robson Green), who just happens to be married to Bel’s sister. Age Before Beauty shows a different side of British life, one filled with tattoo parlors and working-class folk struggling to get by. If you are tired of all the murder mysteries and costume dramas that dominate BritBox, give this one a try. You won’t regret it.
Life in Squares (2015)
One of the most famous female authors ever is Virginia Woolf, who wrote such classic novels as The Waves and Mrs. Dalloway and who was memorably portrayed by Nicole Kidman and her prosthetic schnoz in the excellent 2002 film The Hours. But most people don’t know about her life as the queen of her social scene in the early 20th century and her complicated relationship with her sister Vanessa.
Life in Squares will change that. The three-part miniseries paints in vivid detail Virginia’s life among the Bloomsbury Group, a lively circle of artists, bohemians, and intellectuals who traded ideas, jokes, criticisms, and (sometimes) lovers with each other. One such lover was Duncan Grant (James Norton), a bisexual Scottish artist who attracts and confounds Virginia. Life in Squares is a costume drama that’s vivacious and a bit naughty, and it’s the perfect way to spend 2025 getting to know a historical figure who is largely remembered today as a suicidal manic-depressive with a severe case of writer’s block.
The Victim (2019)
We’ve all heard those stories of kids murdering other kids, especially in Britain. Child offenders are never named in the press, and due to their age, they are often sentenced to juvenile detention until they turn 18 or are deemed fit to re-enter society as adults. But what happens to them then? That’s the question The Victim wrestles with as it focuses on the mother of a murdered child who thinks she’s found the person responsible as a grown man. After she posts his name and address online, he is violently attacked and claims he’s not the murderer of her child.
Who is to be believed? And should the mother be held accountable for her actions, which caused a potentially innocent man to almost lose his life? The Victim is not your typical crime drama, as there’s nothing exaggerated about its central murder. This is an all-too-real issue, and The Victim doesn’t diminish its subject matter with cheap theatrics. It’s a well-rounded drama, with a great lead performance by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald (Gosford Park) as the still-grieving mother.
Time (2021-2023)
Life in Great Britain isn’t all crumpets and afternoon tea. It has problems just like anywhere else, and that includes an imperfect prison system that could be better at handling criminals. His Majesty’s Prison Service is the primary location for Time, a two-season anthology show that received widespread critical acclaim when it premiered in 2021.
The first season focuses on Mark (Sean Bean), who just entered prison and is actually guilty of the crime he committed. Racked with guilt, he struggles to adjust to prison life and befriends a sympathetic prison officer, Eric (Stephen Graham). In the second season, the show focuses on three women — Orla (Doctor Who‘s Jodie Whittaker), Abi (Tamara Lawrance), and Kelsey (The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey) — who are all experiencing prison life in different ways. Time is as sobering as it sounds — think of it as Britain’s answer to Oz, that groundbreaking HBO show from the ’90s — but it’s also a superb drama that is never less than enthralling to watch.
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? (2022)
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? is probably the best mystery ever made with the worst-sounding title. After all, who the heck is Evans? But that’s the show’s only big flaw, as this sparking adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1934 novel contains everything that’s so great about the British crime drama: an evocative period and setting; two lead protagonists, Will Poulter’s Bobby and Lucy Boynton’s Frankie, who also share an indelible chemistry with one another; and a genuinely perplexing mystery, one that you can’t crack until it’s solved for you at the end.
On a seaside cliff one breezy day, Bobby hits his golf ball over the edge and goes down to the beach to retrieve it. What he finds is shocking: a man lies on the coast dying and manages to say a few final words: “Why didn’t they ask Evans?” Disturbed and intrigued, Bobby vows to solve the man’s murder and find the answer to his dying question. This three-episode series adaptation was directed by House‘s Hugh Laurie, who keeps things breezy and light even when dead bodies start piling up.
Pride & Prejudice (1995)
It wouldn’t be a complete BritBox list without a period costume drama, so why not watch the best of them all? The 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride & Prejudice is already famous for being one of the best, if not the best, adaptations of Jane Austen’s comic masterpiece, and that’s due to one reason: Colin Firth’s wet shirt.
Well, that’s not entirely true; this six-episode limited series faithfully recreates Austen’s world of genteel courtship and establishes one of the best “will they, or won’t they?” romances between Firth’s dashing Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle’s too-proud Elizabeth Bennett. Yes, this version has aged a bit, but it’s still the most Austen-like of all the Jane Austen shows and movies and will always be worth a watch or two or 10.
