Solving the Puzzle of British TV’s Success in the U.S.

Outside my dormitory room’s window in Exeter, lay a grassy hill with sheep grazing. I was at a conference a few hours’ drive southwest of London and yet the pastoral scene reminded me of my boyhood home in western Pennsylvania.

The view in Exeter was the same exact scene I saw every day growing up. Near my high school, sheep grazed on a hill, thick with green grass in the western Pennsylvania town of Ligonier, which had its origin as a pivotal fort for the British — back in 1758.