Gather together a group of television critics, add a BBC executive, or a high-up from ITV or Channel 4, and it won't be very long before one of the hacks plaintively asks the commissioning editor: "Why can't we do what the Americans do? Why can't British television give us a series like Breaking Bad or Mad Men?" Cue much nodding and murmuring from his colleagues, who will now spend the next 10 minutes or more collectively swooning over Bryan Cranston's performance as Walter White, the chemistry teacher-turned-crystal meth dealer in Breaking Bad, or tediously explaining as if to a child why the experience of watching Mad Men, with its daringly spare and withholding script, is akin to reading a fat novel.
This in turn will lead them to ponder the performances of Anna Gunn as scary Skyler White and Elisabeth Moss as plucky Peggy Olson, from whose wonderfully expressive faces it is impossible isn't it? to tear one's eyes. And then, as surely as night follows day, the inevitable cry will go up. What about the women? Where is our Lena Dunham? they will wail. Where is our Tina Fey?!
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