The accents.
Obvs.
American television will beat a show to death. Remember "jumping the shark?" They will take a good thing, and keep it going until it turns to crap.
British TV knows how to tell a story and then move on. None of this "You hang up first. No, you hang up first. No, you," bullshit. They don't drag it out-they say "Bye" and hang up the phone.
They still make period pieces.
I mean, holy shit! Downton Abbey! There's also Mr. Selfridge, Grantchester, Endeavor....TV with history woven through, with rich vocabulary, beautiful attention to detail...we don't have much to compete with that.
The people look like people.
This is from DCI Banks. She's beautiful. With normal body weight, regular hair, and, I noticed a few episodes in, she was always wearing a button up shirt un-tucked. As she turned in one episode, I could spot a muffin top. You know-like the rest of us have. And look at Ellie on Broadchurch. Totally curly mom hair, no makeup. Just a mom, going to work everyday-like us. I respect the hell out of that.
They will cut a bitch.
Don't get too attached to anyone. They'll kill them. They don't care.
The dialog
Point 1-pay attention to the dialog, or you won't know what's happening. In other words, they don't make a bunch of TV for dummies (they probably actually do, but it's not what gets imported). Point 2-I love their vocabulary-bollocks, tube, wanker, well, you didn't see me doing it, did you? It's not just the accent, but the sentence structure, the actual words, and the different pronunciations of certain words-aluminum, vitamin, ambulatory...love it.
Have you seen Phil Davis?
If Phil Davis isn't proof that British TV is committed to the story and not the glam, I don't know what is.