Brilliant Abroad, Broke at Home: The British TV Goldmines That Made the World Rich and Left Us With Nothing

Somewhere in Los Angeles right now, there is almost certainly a writers' room full of people adapting a British television format. They are being paid extremely well. The show they are making will air on a major network, attract enormous ratings, spawn multiple spin-offs, and generate a licensing revenue stream that will outlast everyone in that room. Somewhere in the UK, meanwhile, the original version of that format — the one that started it all, the one that was actually good — is either cancelled, underfunded, or being gently ignored by the broadcaster that owns it.

This is not a new story. It is, in fact, one of Britain's oldest and most reliable national traditions, ranking somewhere alongside queuing, apologising unnecessarily, and losing penalty shootouts. We make something extraordinary. The world takes it. The world makes billions. We make a cup of tea and watch it happen.

Let us count the ways.

The Office: A Prophet Unrecognised in Its Own Land

We should probably start here, because the numbers are almost cosmically unfair.

The original The Office, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, ran for two series and a Christmas special on BBC Two between 2001 and 2003. It was, by any measure, a masterpiece — one of the most formally innovative, emotionally precise comedies ever made for British television. It won BAFTAs. It won Golden Globes. It was critically adored. And then it ended, because Gervais and Merchant decided twelve episodes and a finale was the perfect amount, and BBC Two did not exactly move heaven and earth to change their minds.

The American adaptation, developed for NBC, ran for nine series, 201 episodes, and became one of the most syndicated shows in US television history. It made Steve Carell a global superstar. It launched the careers of John Krasinski, Mindy Kaling, and B.J. Novak. It is currently earning Netflix an estimated £50 million per year in licensing fees — for a show that finished airing in 2013. The original British version, twelve episodes of unimpeachable television genius, earns a fraction of that. Its cast members are lovely and talented and have had decent careers. None of them are Steve Carell.

Love Island: The Show Britain Made and the World Monetised

Let's talk about Love Island, because it is arguably the most instructive case study in modern British format exploitation.

ITV2's dating show — initially greeted with a degree of critical snobbery that now looks fairly embarrassing in retrospect — became a genuine cultural phenomenon. The UK version, filmed in Mallorca on a budget that has always been mysteriously modest relative to its ratings, generates enormous advertising revenue for ITV and has made genuine stars of its alumni. It is, by any measure, a commercial success.

But the international picture makes the UK operation look like a lemonade stand outside a supermarket. The Australian version, Love Island Australia, has run multiple series and attracted sponsorship deals that dwarf the original. The American adaptation, Love Island USA, was revived by Peacock after CBS initially cancelled it and has since become one of the streaming platform's biggest hits. German, French, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian — practically every country with a coastline and a camera has made its own version, each one generating licensing fees that flow back to ITV Studios' international arm.

The original British show, for all its success, remains filmed in a villa that looks like it was sourced on a budget Airbnb search, with a production infrastructure that industry insiders have described as perpetually squeezed. The format is worth hundreds of millions globally. The mothership that created it operates like it's still a gamble.

The Great British Bake Off Problem

Now, Bake Off is an interesting one, because it's a format that has actually been treated relatively well domestically — Channel 4 pays serious money for it, and the production values are genuinely lovely. But the international adaptation story is still instructive.

The American version, The Great British Baking Show (renamed because the word "bake off" is apparently trademarked by Pillsbury in the US, which is a sentence that should make every British person quietly furious), has been running on Netflix since 2014. It airs with a season's delay, meaning American viewers watch British episodes that have already aired here, and it has introduced the format to an audience of tens of millions who would never have encountered it otherwise.

The licensing revenue from international adaptations of the format — there are versions in over thirty countries — is substantial. The Danish version is enormous. The German version is enormous. And yet the conversation around the UK original is perpetually dominated by whether Channel 4 is paying too much for it, whether it should move again, whether the budget is sustainable. The golden goose is perennially under threat of being sold off, while every country that bought its eggs is doing very nicely indeed.

Why Does This Keep Happening?

The pattern is consistent enough to suggest it isn't accidental, so what's actually going on?

Several factors conspire to produce this outcome, and none of them are particularly flattering to the British broadcasting establishment.

First, there is the structural economics of UK television. British broadcasters, even the commercially funded ones, operate in a relatively small domestic market. The BBC is funded by a licence fee that hasn't kept pace with inflation. ITV and Channel 4 are dependent on advertising markets that have been battered by digital disruption. Sky's entertainment budgets are substantial but selective. Nobody has the kind of money that American networks or streaming giants can deploy, which means even successful British formats are perpetually underfunded relative to their global potential.

Second — and this is the one that really stings — there is a peculiarly British tendency to treat domestic success with a kind of suspicious modesty that tips over into active neglect. A show that's doing well is, in certain commissioning cultures, a show that probably doesn't need any more investment. Why pour resources into something that's already working? The assumption that success is self-sustaining, rather than something that requires continued nurturing, has killed more than a few formats that deserved better.

"We have a cultural instinct to move on," observes one veteran UK format producer who has sold shows to markets across four continents. "Americans find a format that works and they run it until the wheels fall off. We find a format that works and we start wondering whether it's time to try something new. It's admirable in a way. It's also absolutely maddening from a business perspective."

Third, and perhaps most structurally significant, is the way international licensing deals are structured. When a British broadcaster sells a format abroad, the money flows primarily to the production company and the format owner — not back into the original show. The British version and its international offspring are financially separate entities. The original can be struggling for budget while the formats it spawned are printing money in São Paulo and Seoul, and the two things simply don't connect.

The Ones Who Got Away and the Ones Still Running

Not every story ends in bitterness. Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — a British format sold to over 160 countries — made its creators extraordinarily wealthy and ran successfully in the UK for years. Strictly Come Dancing, exported as Dancing with the Stars to approximately every country that has ever held a dance competition, remains robust domestically.

But for every Strictly, there's a Changing Rooms, a Ground Force, a Weakest Link — formats that conquered international markets while their UK versions quietly faded. There's a Pop Idol, the British original that begat American Idol, which became a cultural institution in the US while the British original was cancelled after two series.

Britain is, without question, one of the greatest television format factories in the history of the medium. The creativity is real, the talent is genuine, and the global influence is undeniable.

We just have a slight problem with the bit that comes after.

Know a British format that deserved better? We've got opinions and a comments section. Use both.