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.