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Comment by electromagnetic | Hacker News Reader

No, the Hollywood "look" is having tens/hundreds of millions of dollars to dump. TV looks low-budget because it is low budget. But there's a big difference between real low budget TV and simply TV.

Honestly, download an original British or Canadian drama show that doesn't get carried in the US and you'll see low budget. You'll see horrific, unwatchable direction.

I'm sorry, but give Sam Raimi a video camera with any frame rate and there's a significant chance he'll produce a blockbuster with it. I mean Oliver Stone released big budget movies using Super8!

The Hollywood "look" is genericness, because like everything else about Hollywood the studios are whole-heartedly fearful of anything that might stop someone watching a film, and in doing so turn people off watching films by lacking originality from plot to cast to cameras.

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I can't speak for Canadian TV but primetime British dramas are generally technically excellent - for instance, this year's Oscar winner for Best Director, Tom Hooper, has directed episodes of Cold Feet, EastEnders and Byker Grove.

Practically nothing that doesn't feature US accents and locations is picked up by the networks - sometimes period co-productions sneak in, as long as there's pretty frocks and no swearing.

You're missing Misfits, for instance, which is the best show on TV...

The BBC has some of the best camerawork I've ever seen. Other European productions aren't bad either (RTL comes to my mind)

Disclaimer: I'm a layman, but that's my opinion as a South American that has watched both North American and European TV (with long stays in Canada and Austria).

I'm not arguing against you, I'm from the UK and there are some great shows. Skins has been technically excellent since its onset, I even got my wife (Canadian) watching it. Shameless is another example. Even shows like Hollyoaks (if it's still on) are technically great, I actually thought their quality of shooting (the clearness of camera positioning, etc.) was better than shows like 24 were managing and it's a rolling-production with 1 week to film an episode and 3 episodes airing a week.

I'm talking, look at the first episode of Primeval. It was atrocious across the board from acting to directing and 3D graphics; especially for reaching an audience of ~6.8 million. Compare that to the outstanding production qualities of Stargate Universe that only got ~2.3 million in a 5x bigger market.

My example are shows like the Canadian Flashpoint, which despite a decent budget and getting 1 million viewers can just be awful. The stories often have little reasoning behind them (shit literally just happens), the direction can often be gaudy by trying to make grand shots and just utterly failing. It often feels cold, like they're not using close-ups right. I often find this in many British shows too, comedies and traditional dramas not so much, but especially a lot of the police shows can be awful.

OK, Primeval is not great - but it is well-researched: most of the monsters in the show are not known prehistoric creatures, for example, which makes sense given the long gaps in the fossil record. And the rendering is excellent - it's just that the creatures have a limited interaction with the real environment, which I guess is down to budget.

And Primeval could never approach, say, the brain-rotting stench of The Cape. SGU's poor ratings are not a badge of honour, it is a cancelled show!

As for police shows - that's pretty much a US speciality, but the really good ones are under constant threat of cancellation.

I do concede though, while I've frequently thought of British TV lately "damn, there's a lot that's good right now!", this thought has never consciously crossed my mind while watching anything Canadian. Due South, anyone?

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