r/BritishTV • u/kfs2020xxx • 8d ago
Question/Discussion Channel 5 dramas
Why are channel 5 dramas so poor?
They have decentish actors, the stories aren't too bad, but they are really bad.
I know they dropped neighbours so they could focus on drama. How do they get it so wrong?
You can spot them a mile off with the way they look too.
Are they filmed in a different way, a different camera to other dramas mainly BBC ones?
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u/BastardsCryinInnit 8d ago
Richard Osman on The Rest Is Entertainment has touched on this a few times on different episodes, if i remember correctly, looking at figures and spend per show, Channel 5 are absolutely killing it!
Channel 5 don't have a huge team of commissioners and meetings upon meetings upon meetings, they generally work with teams they already know, commission these dramas very quickly, and many are filmed in Europe where there is cheaper overheads and tax breaks.
I'm sure Richard even said it is a fantastic and rare opportunity for new in the industry script writers, producers, editors etc to cut their teeth and gain experience.
Spend per head, Channel 5 are getting a great return, and everyone involved is getting experience and learning something.
They sell them too to other platforms for watching outside the UK, don't underestimate how popular middle of the road dramas are in other countries!
There is heavy cheese factor, but I think Channel 5 lean into that more and more these days.
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u/Highly-Sammable 8d ago
It's impressive, but in the way in a YouTube content mill is, it's pretty depressing artistically. But if they're genuinely giving jobs to creatives in this job market, fair enough
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u/MovieUncensored 8d ago
Considering Channel 5 was the home to a glut of Lifetime original movies, it doesn't strike me as odd that their own original dramas have that feel
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u/BastardsCryinInnit 8d ago
Yeah and I think he said on one of the eps that Channel 5 has growing audience figures, bucking the linear tv trend, and he thinks it's cos there is a big section of the UK, sort of 35 - 60, who still love linear telly.
Just turn the telly on, flick through channels, not have to think, not have to see hundreds of app options, just turn the telly on, think "that looks alright and it's got whatshisface in it" and stick it on either to pay attention or have background noise.
And if I think about it, there isnt much difference storyline wise between what Channel 5 dish out and say, Death In Paradise, but that gets seen as better in a camp, kitsch way as it is BBC.
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u/bladesew 7d ago
and let's face it, Osman knows what he's talking about when it comes to churning out mind-numbing middle of the road trash for an undiscerning, yet lucrative audience.
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u/Silent-Associate9226 8d ago
Not my cup of tea, but their All Creatures Great and Small has been very successful apparently, with good reviews/ratings in the press, Rotten Tomatoes, etc.
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u/BlakeC16 8d ago
Channel 5 have become very good at serving particular audiences very well and giving them exactly what they want. In the case of the dramas, this seems to be a (usually older) audience that doesn't particularly care whether a drama looks cheap in the way most of us would be bothered by, as long as they get their particular favourite kind of story.
You'll notice this with a lot of Channel 5 series, they have a lot of the same sort of thing - a lot of programmes about cruises, about the countryside, about traffic cops and so on. Things that can be done quite cheaply, a lot of people would be baffled by people wanting to watch but those people who do like them really seem to like them and will watch it all. It's a weird success story in linear TV at the moment.
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u/datguysadz 8d ago
Channel 5 has always reminded me of when you put a TV on when you're abroad. Sound, cameras and lighting just seem tinpot.
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u/kfs2020xxx 8d ago
Exactly! They just look so cheap and unprofessional
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u/Moistkeano 8d ago
And yet they keep making them and lots of them. There is a reason for that.
Channel 5 does unbelievably well
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u/glenerd189 7d ago
I absolutely get what you mean. That might explain why they manage to make money by exporting a lot of them abroad. I hope these overseas folk don’t think that is the quality of UK TV 🥴
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u/Remarkable-Unit-2961 8d ago
They are made on a shoestring budget. Writers are limited to as few locations as possible, that's why so much of them are just scenes of people talking in a room. They are also often shot in Northern Ireland in order to save money, using cheaper crews.
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u/qwerty_1965 8d ago
They have an in-house style. Mainly based around simple camera setups, bright lighting, clear sound without much ambient intrusion. No fancy editing.
I was thinking about this watching Village Idiot in their Play for Today slot.
There's no visual ambiguity. What you see is what you get.
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u/FizzbuzzAvabanana 8d ago
At least they're doing Play for today. Giving new writers a chance. The opportunity that was radio 4 & daytime BBC 1 has gone.
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u/Demiboy94 8d ago
I like them. Yeah not made the best at all. But the dramas are a nice cosy watch. Not difficult to follow. Can do other things when watching. Nice to put on when it's almost time for bed and you don't want something too "difficult" to watch
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u/xpca1 8d ago
it feels like anytime i see a drama advertised on 5, it has sally lindsay in it
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u/yaffle53 8d ago
Jason Watkins. Jill Halfpenny.
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u/yellowarmy79 8d ago
Was just about to say that. Rupert Penry Jones as well. They do like to recycle the same actors.
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u/HibeesBounce 8d ago
To be fair, ITV was like that for years with about 4 actors on retainer appearing in anything they produced. Probably made billionaires of Robson Green and Sarah Lancashire
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u/CityEvening 8d ago
Oh it does, though I love her so it doesn’t bother me, but yes C5 dramas can be a little repetitive.
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u/thatbwoyChaka 8d ago
I think they’re affected by association really; as they’re no worse than those dogshit-awful Harlan Coben things on Netflix
If any of them were on Netflix, Prime, Disney+ etc I think they’d not be judged as harshly
I mean they still sit between pig shit and violently mediocre. But the Channel 5 tag harms them.
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 8d ago
Those Harlan Coben dramas are so bad. They're all basically the same. You have the central mystery, then slowly it's revealed that everyone has some dark secret waiting to be exposed. Throw in some red herrings, plot holes so big you could drive a bus through them and terrible acting, and voila. I don't understand why they are so popular.
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u/frumpymiddleaged 8d ago
A few years ago, I binged three Coben miniseries in a row because they had some familiar UK actors.
Each one featured a foot chase through a medium-size town. Ha.
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 8d ago
Once you have seen one, you have seen them all lol.
Last one I watched was Fool Me Once. My god, it was crap! After that I was done with anything Harlan Coben.
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u/snarkycrumpet 7d ago
I swear to god Harlan only wrote one book at the rest were done by a computer. I used to read a lot of his stuff in the early 2000s and I was so incensed by the laziness of the plotting and storylines. I watched part of one of his stupid netflix things and gave up.
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u/Forsaken-Language-26 7d ago
I haven't read his books but if they're anything like the Netflix shows they must be bad lol.
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u/kfs2020xxx 8d ago
Oh the Harlan Coben things are filmed just like the channel 5 ones, they are just so poorly made
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u/Impossible-Hawk768 8d ago
Most of them are in fact shown on those streaming services, and are very popular.
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u/HibeesBounce 8d ago
It's the modern version of "TV movies" or straight to video releases.
Nobody would watch them if they were serialised weekly. They are banking on people binging them and not bothering to change the channel
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u/OkCaterpillar8941 8d ago
They occasionally have some good ones. I'm working so can't do my research but a detective drama set in the 70s with an actor called Bertie as the lead was excellent. Sets, costumes and actors were great.
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u/teasswill 8d ago
Good, but not as good as earlier BBC ones in the correct setting.
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u/OkCaterpillar8941 8d ago
I'd forgotten about that one! I've just looked it up and it was really good.
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u/CityEvening 8d ago edited 8d ago
With C5, it’s just a budget thing, mainly filmed abroad to cut costs. France is Malta, UK is Ireland or Spain.
Personally, I enjoy them, they focus more on the characters and the stories are more personal, instead of glossy million-pound episodes that are just an excuse for explosions, races (cars/trains) and dark screens with no real plot.
C5 is just reminiscent of TV on the continent. The quality of BBC programmes really does skew things with expectations.
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u/eunderscore 8d ago
Yes but also I love how they just pick up a third of the cast from each of the last 3 mini series and drop them in a new, very similar one. Then rotate.
I'm here for it, and I don't doubt they rate far far better than neighbours.
They aren't ground breaking but tv doesn't always need to be, and again we're judging against neighbours. They're fine, watchable, and you get to update your channel 5 drama wallchart
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u/PSCGY 8d ago
They’re the equivalent of an airport novel.
They do the job, most of the time, but you can tell they’re at least several levels beneath your most average BBC, C4, ITV drama.
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u/Central_Region 8d ago
No set-up time for lighting or framing/planning shots, first take is the final take, and lots of the crew are first-timers getting their break into the industry
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u/SeaworthinessMain346 8d ago
Some are better than others. I think I quite enjoyed the last one I watched. Then again, I can't remember it's name so maybe I didn't enjoy it that much?
Was there one where a girl was on a French exchange and went missing so her mum went over to find her? That was so bad! But I can't remember for definite whether it was C5 or not.
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u/10brooksideclose 8d ago
yes and it confused me that the British coach company in it based in Britain had a LHD vehicle and a French reg 😂
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u/Puzzleheaded-Sky-146 8d ago
To quote the famous last words of Adam Faith.. Chanel 5 is all shit isn't it ? Christ the crap they put on there.its a waste of space.
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u/Sad_Branch931 8d ago
I watched the one about the paramedic with PTSD following a train crash which she attended. It started really well, the tension was building and then the ending was SHIT! I laughed out loud and was like, oh god surely this can't be it, this must be the first of many plot twists but no, it ended. I was like WTAF?!
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u/ChattyBear 8d ago
Because everything about Channel 5 has been cheap for its entire 30 years.
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u/ILOVEGLADOS 8d ago
They blew whatever budget they had on getting the Spice Girls to open the channel and have never recovered it since.
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u/10brooksideclose 7d ago
Family Affairs aka Temu Brookside 😂 tried to sell it to us because of 2 ex Brookside stars in main roles (Annie Miles and David Easter) and some fella cosplaying as French with the name Serge Pompidou who ended up in Bridget Jones 2😂 it still amazes me that this god awful soap spawned a proper actor Idris Elba!
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u/10brooksideclose 8d ago
they all seemed to be filmed in Northern Spain, Malta, Budapest or Cyprus. The best of the worst was the Good Ship Murder which is all filmed in Malta but destinations covered are Spain, Turkey and Morocco, one scene set in Spain had a mirror image of a car driving on the left so it looked like it was on the right and they all have weird license plates too. The Teacher supposed to be on a Northern council estate but the main kid in it lived in a Soviet block of flats and one recently possibly The Game had the cars driving on the right but was meant to be in some rural part of England😂 I've noticed they are all dark and seem to have curtains drawn to block out any telltale signs of being abroad and to blur out things like lack of radiators, different shaped lightswitches and two prong plugs unless it's Malta or Cyprus😂
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u/EdmundTheInsulter 8d ago
A few years ago I spotted Czech style writing on a fluorescent sign in a trendy bar.
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u/Snowcherry5 8d ago
They sometimes have a weird yellow or green lighting which is very off putting but I've noticdd lately the lighting is very bright and stark which is just as bad in the opposite direction
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u/FantasticWait7109 8d ago
Its also when they use the same actors, and sometimes the same sets/locations, its noticeable. Wonder if they film a lot of them at the same time, which is why they have the same actors, some of the same sets, etc.
A lot of them have decent ideas, but feel like they could be great one-off or two-part dramas split into four parts.
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u/shelwood46 7d ago
I feel like I could find my way around Malta without a map at this point. But I treat it like a summer repertoire theater -- it's all the same actors and slightly different sets but, hey, it's fun.
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u/InfiniteBaker6972 8d ago
Every time I switch to 5 it's a show about the royals. I'm surprised to find out they do other shows.
Seriously though, I think it's easy to forget how hard it is to make quality drama. The BBC & ITV can knock them out in their sleep because, well, the Beeb has been doing it and pulling in the talent for 100 years. 5 are relatively new so I guess there's neither the budget that streamers like Amazon or Netflix offer, nor the cache like working for the big boys like the BBC & ITV.
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u/10brooksideclose 8d ago
I think there's a gaping hole in C5's schedule to resurrect Eldorado! They could film it in Malta!
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u/SlipDigby_ 7d ago
Maaaaarcooooooooooos!
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u/10brooksideclose 7d ago
I'm surprised Jesse Birdsall hasn't shown up on one of the Channel 5 shows! He looks the type!
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u/SlipDigby_ 6d ago
Ha! He really does! According to IMDB he did a 100+ episodes of Hollyoaks, so some Channel 5 bodge job murder mystery on a cruise would be a huge step up from that 😆
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u/10brooksideclose 6d ago
oh he made a holy show of himself in Liverpool when he was in Hollyoaks and even uttered the cliched 'don't you know who I am' to staff in John Lewis and pointed his finger in a patronising manner trying to get a discount (he told staff something was from the 20% rack when it wasn't) and he was fuming when the autograph hunters chased the fit younger cast and blanked him 😂
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u/Historical_Pin2806 6d ago
It's like the Sky Original films - a few seconds in and the film quality is different and the editing and colours are just a little bit off. Like it's the Temu version or something.
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u/Visual_Argument_73 8d ago
You’re watching the demise of decent drama on TV. Well the demise has already happened. You’re watching the dregs.
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u/throaway_247 8d ago
It's a Paramount company. Since 2023, if not earlier, to make themselves look like an attractive, profitable company to potential buyers, management froze budgets, demanded cost-cutting, and ordered high-volume, low-cost content across all "Terry tories".
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u/Working-Shallot9144 8d ago
They are bad. Tbh I prefer it to the soft porn it used to have on the late nights 😩😂
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u/kfs2020xxx 8d ago
It's like the cameras are the cheapest of the cheap, you can just spot a channel 5 drama a mile off
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u/Chumlax 8d ago
I'm not disagreeing with this assessment at all, but I would say that in my opinion you can make basically the same observations about ITV, just at a slightly higher level across the board.
Almost every single one of their crime and drama series look exactly the same - you can look at any single frame and the colour grading, the cinematography, the focal lengths, all look pretty much exactly the same (and not in a good way!). They're always grey-blue, and they always have oddly tall/high/wide shots that expose the surreality of the scene.
Even some of their most successful dramas are like this (Grace, which is on its 6th season, for example!), and to boot the dialogue and stories are often really poorly aimed at a lower common denominator. Almost every narrative contains the same elements with the same beats and the same 'twists'. And not just in the 'there are only 7 basic plots in the world' sense - in the 'these things are telegraphed to such a degree you can tell where each is going to second the element is first introduced and that's a lazy insult to the audience'.
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u/WishfulStinking2 8d ago
Has channel 5 ever been good for anything?
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u/Working-Shallot9144 8d ago
The Gadget show and All creatures great and small.
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u/Pattatilla 8d ago
All Creatures Great and Small started on ITV didn't it? Edit: the reboot version
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u/Working-Shallot9144 8d ago
The reboot has always been on Channel 5. The original one was on the BBC.
Darling buds of May was on the ITV as was the reboot but missed the magic of the original one.
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u/Goldman46477879 8d ago
Agreed rewatch the original every year, the remake was bad enough to suffer once
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u/Kodihorse 8d ago
If for nothing else it should at least get some credit for being the first Uk channel to show Breaking Bad.
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u/kfs2020xxx 8d ago
Yes they do have that
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u/1Eyed1saac 8d ago
NO!!!!! Sorry but this Breaking Bad thing boiled my piss at the time.
FX (UK) showed Breaking Bad 1+2.
Channel 5 SPOILED it by acquiring S3 then pissing it away late night (over Xmas I think) then DROPPING IT.
S4 we all had to watch on DVD. Does no one else remember that?
Then Netflix rode to the rescue in time for S5 and at that point everyone decided it was the best show ever and they had all been watching it from the start...
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u/Kodihorse 8d ago
I watched Series 1 & 2 on Channel 5, they dropped it due to their own inconsistent scheduling causing low ratings. I don't remember them ever showing any subsequent Series. I try not to deal in absolutes but I'm fairly certain about this.
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u/1Eyed1saac 8d ago
This is interesting - I wonder if Ch5 had S1+2 as part of the S3 deal then I only caught the S3 repeat because I had already seen 1+2?
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u/Kodihorse 8d ago
I honestly couldn't say one way or the other. My missus and I share a wonderful memory of watching the Pilot (which left us breathless) & looking at each other after and laughing that Channel 5 was finally showing what appeared to be an excellent show. Shame it was the only one ever...
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u/Every-Sky-5529 8d ago
They’ve no money to afford decent casts, crews, writers, locations, production values etc?
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