I mean if there's one thing the UK is known for it's that they like being miserable.
Lol, you're not wrong. We bongs are responsible for some of the bleakest, grimmest things in modern media.
Kes, for instance. A lad growing up dirt poor in a coal mining town called Billy Casper whose own mother sees him as a lost cause and who is bullied by his big brother Jud and whose teachers at school think he's not much cop and who dreads having to leave school and go work down t'pit finds an injured kestrel in the woods. He nurses the kestrel back to health and learns all about falconry and falconing and finds, finally, something he's good at. Kes becomes his only friend. One day, Jud asks him to put some money on a horse at the bookies, and Billy reckons it's not going to win because it's a rank outsider and forgets. The horse romps home and Jud misses out on winning quite a lot of money (ten quid, which was a lot in the 1960s when this was set). So Jud gets revenge by shooting Kes with an air rifle and stuffing its corpse in the bin. The end. As an added bonus, this takes place in a town called Grimethorpe.
Threads. It's 1983, and the Cold War goes tits up. Global thermonuclear war occurs. We are clinically informed "Total yield hitting the UK: 80 megatons." We follow two families from Sheffield before and after the bomb goes off. After it goes off, it's basically literally looting and brawling over the juiciest rats. A girl belonging to one of the families is pregnant at the time and has her child in a ruined barn. The kid survives. Fifteen years later, it's obvious that her child is suffering from malnutrition and fallout-caused brain damage and after battling with some other teenage lad over the corpse of a dog to eat, she and the lad fuck, she gets pregnant, and she finds her way into one of the few functional medical settings left in the country. She has the child and the final freeze frame is looking aghast at the horrifically birth-deformed (which we don't see, just her expression of ultimate horror) offspring she's just given life to. The end.
Red Riding. Comes in three episodes, set in 1974, 1977, and 1983. It's about police corruption in West Yorkshire and how Sean Bean and a bunch of his mates played by Warren Clark and Paddy Considine are covering up a child prostitution ring and using the construction of a shopping mall to launder the money from same. Tagline, "This is the North, where we do what we want." Each episode centres on someone coming close to the truth and undergoing a horrible fate as a result. The only hope spot is that Sean Bean gets shot at the end of the first episode.
Trainspotting. It's about heroin addicts in Scotland. Infamous scenes include one character who fucks a girl, declares afterwards that he has never cum so hard since Archie Gemmell scored in the 1970s, finds out she's underage. The Worst Toilet in Scotland. And so forth. Oh, and Begbie exists.
The Wicker Man. Sumer is icumen in. Scottish police officer with deeply held Christian beliefs goes to remote island to try to track down a missing child. Gradually discovers that the island is under the sway of a murderous heathen cult led by Lord Summerisle and all the islanders are in on it. Including the allegedly missing child. And it's all a ruse to get him to come to the island to be a virgin sacrifice in a hideous fertility ritual. He burns to death. The end.
Day of the Triffids. Sentient mobile plant creatures that look like a sort of three-legged Venus fly trap / pitcher plant are discovered in a jungle and kept and bred because they produce loads of vegetable oil that promises to solve all energy crises. Unfortunately they are smarter than they are led to be, can communicate over long distances by rattling their branches, turn the tables, and start capturing and breeding humanity to act as fertiliser for them.
