> If the Tories were that hated they wouldn't keep getting in.

While I do absolutely lament the lack of any critical thought in the UK electorate over the last 13 years...

The Tories got back in the last several times because they harnessed the idiocy of Brexit and Labour proceeded to completely shit the bed at the same time, not because people suddenly thought the Tories had good policies.

I personally know multiple family members that in 2014 wouldn't have pissed on a Tory if they were on fire, to then vote for them in successive elections because they made Brexit their ideology.

While a great many people might seethe at TV personalities with drag acts you have to keep in mind that there are huge differences in attitudes of Americans depending on what states you are talking about. Ru Paul for example has had his Drage Race show for 14 years now and AFAIK he started gaining prominence in the late '80s (TIL he was in the B-52's Love Shack video)

Not directly no but in recent years changes were made to the BBC board and since then a disproportionate number of BBC higher-ups have active ties to the Tory party and some have even stated that they joined to intentionally cancel programming that is critical of the Tory party, Brexit and Trump.

There is also the issue of BBC staff admitting that they purposefully allowed biased broadcasts to occur frequently during the 2014 Scottish Independence campaign because BBC staff felt like "We had a duty to defend the integrity of the Union".

£159 per year if you watch live broadcast TV, watch content on the BBC I-Player streaming service, or just generally watch live streams of shows on the likes of Amazon Prime, Now, Sky Go, All 4 etc.

It was a good idea back in the day of very few channels on TV as it helped pay for some great content that on paper was free from the usual pressures and it ensured that across the BBC channels, you had pretty much every base covered from Kids TV to News, Education, Sport, Drama, Comedy, Documentaries, Art, Religion etc.

But as competing channels became available through the likes of satellite and cable and then the internet came along with streaming the license fee has become increasingly contentious, especially as it racks up political scandals that call into question its impartiality.

Under the current Tory government, the plan is that the fee is being scrapped in 2027 and the BBC will have to sink or float like any other media company. The Tories will claim that this is to save the public money while people who hate the Tories will claim that its because they want to remove a source of media that on paper should be impartial and critical of them when required, as well as the usual motives of personal gain from handing their donors and friends contracts worth hundreds of millions.

Whether that will happen or not is unknown as the current Tory government is very unlikely to win the next election which has to happen by January 2025 at the latest. Labour who are widely expected to win the next election has been critical of the Tories intending to scrap the fee while at the same time not exactly stating what their own position will be, giving some wishy-washy answers that may or may not see the BBC continue as it does currently.

I myself am planning to scrap my license and TV package later this year when my contract runs out and switch to streaming services only. I barely watch live TV these days maybe 3-4 hours total per week and even then it's not content I care enough about to pay the fee for.

While the overall institution is the BBC the divisions are largely separate and the BBC News division is meant to be bound by its charter to present news of public interest and the BBC being a shit show certainly qualifies.

On paper, it is better than other approaches in which a media company will just flat-out ignore controversies or fuck ups that it has a hand in.

But it also gets used by people to wrongly state that because the BBC criticizes itself now and again that it just be 100% impartial and not at all biased.

No Niles, Daphne, Roz, Bulldog or indeed Martin and Eddie for more obvious reasons.

I loved Frasier but it was a series that worked thanks to all the characters, not just the titular character.

For people saying it has been cancelled by TNT:

It's a British Sky TV production and they have not only renewed it for a second season but have been actively filming it since November so it's still an active show, there just isn't a US distributor for it at this time.

Its an experience, not the worst thing I have seen but also not something I would watch again.

It's just a really weird story that becomes progressively more insane.