I think this is why British crime dramas / police procedurals seem to feel more real (to me, raised in a post-colonial country) - very few people look like temporarily financially embarrassed models slumming it as detectives.
But I'm curious - what exactly gets to Australia from Russia nowadays?
You might like https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0376968/ The Return and it sequel, The Banishment https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0488905/
They are sort of 'harder' than the 'How I Ended This Summer'.
Unfortunately, 2010-s didn't deliver much.
I'm actually doing something similar -- watching all of Midsomer Murders. I absolutely love the way John Nettles' Barnaby (haven't seen any with the new actor) is righteous and upstanding without becoming preachy. In particular S01E03 where his partner's homophobia is shut down. The fact that most of the horrible people are high-brow also has a nice feel to it -- very Columbo-esque.
Not always.
(mild spoiler)
The resident pathologist Dr Fleur Perkins who appears in series 20 is played by seventy year old Annette Badland, [0] who is much sterner than her predecessor (a much younger Manjinder Virk [1]).
That said, Midsomer Murders does now have a different demographic than the earlier series, which typically involved older, white eccentrics living in quaint English villages, and caricatured a rural society that is now long gone. The cast is now more likely to include Black and Asian characters in various roles as good guys, villains, innocents, suspects and guilty parties. The current Mrs Barnaby is a 50-year old woman, also a stronger character than her predecessor, who was also in her 50s when she first appeared in the series.
But yes, European media in general is less focused on physical æsthetic perfection than I find U.S.A, Japanese, Korean, and Indian media to be; I often find a similar result in German, Swedish and Dutch television series that characters seem to look considerably more average.
Ruth Wilson is a great actress, and, in my opinion, somewhat attractive, but she's not of the "Moved to LA and looking for stardom" mould that a lot of American actors and actresses fall into.
The BBC version from the eighties had actors more in keeping, I think.
These were also the only thing my parents watched, so it was a relief when I got to watch normal people TV and saw someone in their 20s.
Those are, depending on taste, some of the worst. And they are also old. There was a lot of good from that era, comedy and other, like fawlty towers, blake's 7 (not comedy), monty python etc. I think gp was referring to modern UK crime shows though? As in the days of dads army and are you being served, american shows also were not like in the article. Or are they showing re-runs of these shows on BBC America now?
Even back then (about 17 years ago) the titles mentioned above were equivalent to the lowest tier cable re-runs on one of those retro TV channels that thrives on being cheap.
It has the occasional conventionally attractive actor, but boy howdy, they really roughed up Richard Dormer, who plays Sam Vimes.
In contrast, every time US studios have to film an actor over 35, they blood-sacrifice a weeping marsupial to the attractiveness pantheon.