Favourite Overseas Programme

Although the bfi TV 100 is an exclusively British list, we wanted to acknowledge the importance of imports to the British television experience. We asked our voters to cite just one as their favourite foreign programme - an impossibly difficult task, perhaps, but they rose to the challenge:

1 Frasier USA (NBC - Grub Street / Paramount) 1993-

2 Heimat Germany (Edgar Reitz Filmproduktion) 1993

3 Das Boot Germany (Bavaria Atelier GmbH) 1981

4 The Simpsons USA (Fox - Gracie Films / 20th Century Fox) 1989-

5 Hill Street Blues USA (NBC - MTM) 1981-87

6 Twin Peaks USA (ABC - Frost/Lynch Productions) 1990-91

7 The Phil Silvers Show USA (CBS) 1955-59

8 Seinfeld USA (NBC - West-Shapiro Productions / Castle Rock Entertainment) 1990-98

9 Friends USA (NBC - Bright-Kauffman-Crane Productions / Warner Bros.) 1994-

10 The Sopranos (HBO - Brillstein/Grey Entertainment) 1999-

Import programmes (particularly American ones) have been in the UK TV schedules for nearly 50 years and have sometimes provided a style and quality rarely found in the home-grown model. When ITV arrived in 1955, it brought with it many US shows, comedies, crime series and most importantly westerns. The BBC also upped its import programme ratio and soon we were seeing the cream of American television, rendering our viewers as familiar as US audiences with the likes of Lucille Ball, Wyatt Earp, Matt Dillon, Joe Friday, Dick Van Dyke, the Cartwright Family and Sergeant. Ernest Bilko.

Although the USA remains by far the greatest provider of import shows, we have received memorable productions from other shores. For example, Germany has sent us Heimat and Das Boot; France, Belle and Sebastian; Japan, The Water Margin and Monkey; Poland, Dekalog; Sweden, Fanny and Alexander; Denmark, The Kingdom; Australia, Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo, Neighbours, Home and Away and Prisoner Cell Block H.

Frasier

  • Paramount Television
  • Producers/directors/writers: Various
  • Creators: David Angell, Peter Casey, David Lee
  • Cast: Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin, Moose the dog
  • NBC 1993-
  • (Grub Street Productions / Paramount)
Image: Frasier.

Frasier Crane had started life as one of the regulars in smash-hit sitcom Cheers, but remarkably, this spin-off series achieved the near impossible and actually bettered its illustrious predecessor. The trials and tribulations of Seattle radio psychiatrist Frasier at work and with his family have been the background to a brilliantly consistent, witty, smart sitcom that has also dared to mix its highbrow dialogue with scenes of exquisite physical comedy. A masterpiece.

Dick Fiddy