10 great British TV shows of 1976

Despite undeniable high spots, 1976 proved a fairly fallow year for British cinema, as various cultural and political factors inhibited more ambitious industry ventures, resulting in a surfeit of sex comedies and slasher films on the British big screen.

But cinema’s loss was very much TV’s gain. Viewers opting to stay home in 1976 were offered something of an abundance of riches on the box, from innovative single dramas to boundary-pushing sitcoms, and compelling series focusing variously on ancient worlds, the turn of the century or pressing contemporary issues. New writing and classic adaptations were given equal time, and if the aesthetic often tended to hew closer to theatre than to film, with largely video-filmed interiors only switching to 16mm for outside shots, such an approach meant that the focus was firmly placed on quality scripts and performances.

For sure, not everything was great, and some shows have undoubtedly ‘aged’ more elegantly than others. But British TV culture seemed notably secure in its identity at this time – that is, in the wealth and worth of British stories as tales worth telling. That another iteration of the list below could easily make space for – among others – Ripping Yarns, Kizzy, Bouquet of Barbed Wire or The Glittering Prizes, plus several of the dramas featured in ITV’s Barry Hanson-produced Plays of Britain anthology, is a further indication of just what a vibrant TV year this was.

Creator: Trevor Griffiths

A former editor of Labour’s Northern Voice newspaper, Trevor Griffiths was well-established as a major dramatist when he wrote Bill Brand, one of the most realistic, intelligent political dramas in British TV history. Jack Shepherd excels as the title character, an ex-lecturer whose experiences as a Labour MP for a Lancashire constituency are charted across 11 rich episodes.

With a stacked supporting cast adding texture, Bill Brand renders the protagonist’s personal travails and political battles equally absorbing. Made today, the equivalent of the series would likely take a real-life figure as its protagonist; it would boast plenty of ‘impersonation’ acting, and probably satisfy neither as drama nor as journalism. Griffiths’ approach is cannier, the fictional focus allowing the series to urgently capture its moment but also to create a still-relevant portrait of the complex relation between political party and individual. Essential.

Creator: John Hawkesworth

The success of Upstairs, Downstairs has proved influential to this day (Downton, anyone?). But with The Duchess of Duke Street, Upstairs, Downstairs scribe John Hawkesworth created a show that was both complementary and entirely its own thing. It centred on a great female protagonist, taking the life of Rosa Lewis, aka the ‘Duchess of Jermyn Street’, as inspiration.

Repeated on Talking Pictures TV in 2026, Hawkesworth’s thoroughly entertaining series unfolds through the first quarter of the 20th century. Its focus is working-class Londoner Louisa Trotter, as she progresses from chef’s kitchen assistant to hotel proprietress in the fulfilment of her dream to be a professional cook. Not a royal dalliance, an inadequate spouse nor the advent of WWI deter Louisa from her chosen path. As the enterprising heroine – forthright, funny, resourceful and never sentimentalised – an inspired Gemma Jones relishes cherishable turns of phrase in an unforgettable performance.

Creator: David Nobbs

In a (mostly) golden decade for the British sitcom, David Nobbs’s The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is among the quirkiest examples. Adapted by Nobbs from his own novels, the show’s focus is the rebellion of one Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, whose midlife crisis and frustration with his sales executive job result first in intrusive thoughts and fantasising, and then in more concrete plans for escape.

Attacking the absurdities of corporate and suburban life with observational wit and surreal aplomb, the series boasted one of Leonard Rossiter’s two indelible sitcom creations (the other being Rising Damp’s Rigsby) – plus a wealth of memorable supporting characters. It resumed with a belated 1996 update in The Legacy of Reginald Perrin, plus a Martin Clunes-starring reboot which ran from 2009 to 2010. Fittingly, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin’s legacy continues in more arcane ways, too; see Sophie Sleigh-Johnson’s 2024 book Code: Damp, which delves into the darker, odder recesses of British sitcom, with Reggie as a major protagonist. Great! Super!

Creator: Jon Watkins

According to James Pine, “by the 1970s television had become the dominant medium for representing British race relations, generally in the form of documentaries examining aspects of so-called immigrant life.” Let’s not overlook other TV genres, though – in particular, sitcoms such as Love Thy Neighbour and Rising Damp. The former essentially passed the baton over to Jon Watkins’ The Fosters, which began its run as Love Thy Neighbour’s ended.

A British transplant of the US series Good Times, The Fosters broke ground as the first all-Black British sitcom. Transferring the concept fairly seamlessly to a south London context, The Fosters focuses on a Guyanese couple (Norman Beaton and Isabelle Lucas) and their British-born offspring (Lenny Henry, Mark Lawrie and Sharon Rosita). Broad but well-observed, the show didn’t set out to be Horace Ové’s Pressure (1975) in its exploration of intergenerational Black British tensions. But nor did it entirely avoid social realities, combining them with crowd-pleasing family comedy.

Writer: Jack Pulman

Few would have predicted the illustrious fate of I, Claudius – that a show adapted from Robert Graves’s historical novels about the Roman Empire would end up becoming one of the most beloved TV series not only of this year, or this decade, but in television history.

The show’s first reviews were quite negative, but audiences soon embraced it and made it a huge success. Herbert Wise’s direction and Jack Pulman’s scripts, which made Roman history accessible and exciting, helped. So did a deluxe cast of luminaries: Derek Jacobi in the lead, alongside Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed and John Hurt, plus many more, delivering ripe, juicy performances. The production values may have long since passed their expiration date, but the show’s bite hasn’t dulled. I, Claudius is a British TV landmark, one whose emphasis on “treasons, statagems and spoils” would later find contemporary expressions in The Sopranos and House of Cards, among others.

Director: Mike Leigh

The BBC’s Play for Today thrived throughout the 70s. Following his first Play for Today foray with Hard Labour (1973), Mike Leigh returned to the series three years later, with what would become, along with Abigail’s Party (1977), one of his signature TV works. Like Abigail, Nuts in May had theatre roots, deriving from Leigh’s 1973 play Wholesome Glory. In the case of Nuts in May, though, Leigh rethought and expanded the material, bringing the characters of Keith and Candice Marie Pratt, created by Roger Sloman and Alison Steadman for the play, out of their suburban comfort zone and placing them in the great outdoors of Dorset.

As the couple’s weekend-hippie inclinations and Keith’s control freakery clash with the attitudes of fellow campers, Leigh hones his improv-derived, self-described “comic realism” based around the “simple juxtaposition of characters”. Rural landmarks, questionable self-composed songs and an undertow of barely concealed despair make Nuts in May the most English of TV classics, one whose observational genius has had an enduring influence, not least on the out-there comedy-horror of Julia Davis’s Camping (2016).

Writer: Howard Schuman

The hype last year around Sally Wainwright’s Riot Women revived contemporary interest in its pioneering ITV predecessor Rock Follies, another drama focusing on a female rock band. But where the busy plotting of Wainwright’s series soon defaulted to the current vogue for crime drama, Rock Follies is much more focused on band dynamics, showbiz machinations, classic musicals homage and indeed the music itself.

Though produced by Verity Lambert and originally inspired by the group Rock Bottom – whose members, Annabel Leventon, Diane Langton and Gaye Brown, would later take Thames TV to court for not crediting their idea – Rock Follies might seem a male-dominated affair in terms of production. Direction is by Brian Farnham, Jon Scoffield and Bill Hayes, the scripts and lyrics by Howard Schuman, and the music by Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay. But the show’s most indelible presences remain the trio of Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Julie Covington as the band. Spawning a second series, two successful soundtracks and a recent stage musical version, Rock Follies is among the most characterful of 70s shows.

Director: Clive Donner

What’s your favourite Peter O’Toole film? Lawrence of Arabia (1962) or My Favorite Year (1982) would be top candidates for most people. O’Toole’s own professed favourite, though, was Rogue Male, the BBC2 TV film adapted from Geoffrey Household’s 1939 novel by screenwriter Frederic Raphael and directed by Clive Donner.

With an assassination attempt on Hitler as its jumping-off point, Rogue Male is a crisp, exciting affair. O’Toole heads a classy cast including Harold Pinter, John Standing and (in his last screen appearance) Alastair Sim. The novel was previously adapted by Fritz Lang as Man Hunt (1941), but Donner’s film returned to the book and reinstated key set pieces, while also adding plenty of smart, tart dialogue about ‘Englishness’ in the Raphael style. Indeed, it was an exceptionally successful year for the writer, which also saw the broadcast of his acclaimed six-part series The Glittering Prizes. He completed the Rogue Male script in just six days, and deemed the project “great fun”.

Director: Lawrence Gordon Clark

“This must be a very lonesome spot to occupy… ” Two men meet at an almost deserted rural railway line. One is chatty, the other strained, strange and initially silent. So starts screenwriter Andrew Davies’s perfectly distilled, eerily quiet adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1886 story, which was presented in the BBC’s much-loved A Ghost Story for Christmas series, a staple of 1970s yuletide programming.

Directed, like most of the series, by Lawrence Gordon Clark, The Signalman is essentially a two-hander for Denholm Elliott and Bernard Lloyd, who partner up beautifully. In a memorably intense performance, Elliott plays the title figure, an isolated man disturbed by the duty of his post and a recurring portentous vision. This lean, atmospheric piece of work is truly haunting, at once a supernatural story and a psychological study of how “the mind makes its own places”.

Director: James Mitchell

Named for the northeast folk song that provided the show with its theme music, When the Boat Comes In is one of the greatest ever British series based around working-class history. The brainchild of James Mitchell, creator of Callan, the series unfolds in a fictional Tyneside town, to which the protagonist, Jack Ford (an excellent James Bolam), returns with ambitions beyond his humble origins after service in WWI.

Partly overlapping with the time period of The Duchess of Duke Street, the show covers 1919 to 1937 across four series, and its richness also lies in its merging of personal drama with wider social issues: unionisation, the impact of poverty, the ‘Irish question’. Spirited rather than worthy, the series is full of spark, making involving drama from the complexities of between-the-wars British life, and the so-called ‘ordinary’ history that seldom makes it to page or screen.

Nuts in May is out on BFI Blu-ray on 17 August.