Marian Halcombe

The BBC has discovered the perfect solution to a problem of its own making: tax the competition. Apparently, British television drama is in crisis. No one watches it, the productions cost a fortune, and—according to those who benefit from failure—the only way to fix things is to slap a five per cent levy on streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. Because nothing says “creative renaissance” quite like a mandatory tithe to fund garbage no one wants.

Let’s be clear. The reason no one watches these dramas isn’t because foreign shows have unfair advantages or because the algorithms are biased. It’s because British TV, especially anything labelled “prestige drama,” is insufferable. It’s woke, preachy, visually drab, structurally bloated, and written by people who’d struggle to win a Year 9 essay competition. The only reason anyone ever tuned in to Line of Duty was to hear someone shout “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey!” before descending back into committee room drama with occasional swearing.

But the real punchline is this: these shows are expensive. Not because they need to be, but because British media production is run with all the financial discipline of a minor Roman emperor in his bathhouse years. Millions are blown on unnecessary crew, overpaid “talent,” and endless rounds of sensitivity readers and diversity consultants. The money doesn’t go on writing better scripts or taking creative risks. It goes on making sure no one, anywhere, is accidentally offended.

And now, having mismanaged the funding they already extort through the licence fee, the plan is to bleed streaming services dry in order to prop up a rotting corpse. We’re told this is about “cultural sovereignty,” a term which here seems to mean “keeping thirty-five-year-old Oxbridge graduates in claret and cocaine.” It’s not about culture. It’s about power. A failing cartel of media bureaucrats trying to force their irrelevance down the throats of people who’ve already moved on.

As for the BBC, it shouldn’t be reformed or revived. It should be shut down. Dismantled. Its assets sold off, and its buildings converted into something more useful—say, high-security prisons for failed education secretaries. The licence fee is nothing more than a tax on the poor to fund the middle-class aesthetic preferences of Hampstead graduates who were all at the front of the queue for those vaccines, and sadly haven’t yet died from them.

And the so-called “independent” broadcasters? Don’t make me laugh. Channel 4, ITV, Sky—they all sing from the same hymn sheet. They are “independent” in the way that government-funded think tanks are “neutral.” Their regional monopolies should be abolished, their regulatory privileges revoked, and their commissioning editors forced to justify their existence in a genuine free market.

This levy is nothing more than protectionism for the culturally bankrupt. It’s an admission that, given a choice, people will not voluntarily consume the trash being served. Rather than improve the product, they demand new rules to rig the market. This isn’t about saving British drama. It’s about saving the jobs of people who don’t deserve them.

There’s a reason people are watching Korean thrillers and Japanese anime. It’s not because of marketing budgets or algorithmic magic. It’s because they’re better. They’re better written, better acted, and not produced under the creative guidance of a DEI officer with a clipboard and a panic button.

You want to save British drama? Here’s an idea: stop funding failure. End the subsidies. Burn the bureaucracies. Make writers compete. Make producers sweat. Let shows succeed or fail on merit. And if the entire edifice crumbles under the weight of its own mediocrity—good. Let it. Perhaps, from the ashes, something worth watching might emerge.

Until then, a five per cent levy on streaming is just another tax for propaganda no one asked for.