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The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The decade's history boom starts here. Six feature-length plays, each by a different writer and each devoted to one queen, so the tone shifts from political chess to marital tragedy as you go. Keith Michell ages from eager young king to bloated tyrant across the run, and the performance won him the 1971 BAFTA for best actor; Annette Crosbie won best actress as Catherine of Aragon.
It is very much a studio production, with talk carrying almost every scene. Treat each episode as a stand-alone play and it is easy to dip into one queen at a time.
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Elizabeth R (1971)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Glenda Jackson plays Elizabeth I from a frightened princess to a white-faced old queen, and the performance is reason enough to watch all six 85-minute plays. She won two Emmys for it, and the serial took the Emmy for best dramatic series in 1972.
The approach is close to filmed theater: long scenes, few locations, every argument fought out in dialogue. If The Six Wives of Henry VIII works for you, this is the natural next box set, picking up the Tudor story where Henry's leaves off.
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Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1971 original, not the 2010 revival. Before Downton Abbey there was 165 Eaton Place, and this is still the better-written version of the idea: 68 episodes following one Belgravia household from 1903 to 1930, with the servants' hall given as much weight as the drawing room.
It began as an idea from two actress friends, Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins, and Marsh plays the parlormaid Rose. Be warned that the first six episodes were shot in black and white and the opening run is the creakiest; by the time the First World War arrives in series four, it is gripping. It went on to win eight Emmys.
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The Onedin Line (1971)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Family saga at its most satisfying: Peter Gilmore's ruthless James Onedin builds a Liverpool shipping line from a single schooner, with the story running from 1860 to 1886 across 91 episodes. Real sailing ships at sea give it a scale few studio dramas of the time could manage.
It is a commitment, and later series lose some of the bite of the early boardroom and dockside scheming. Start with series one and see whether Onedin's hard-headed charm hooks you; the Khachaturian theme certainly will.
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Colditz (1972)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1972 BBC series, not the 2005 remake. What lifts it above a boys'-own escape caper is how seriously it takes the boredom, rivalries and strain of years spent locked in a castle. Major Pat Reid, the real British escape officer at Colditz, advised on the series, and the schemes have the fiddly plausibility that comes from that.
Bernard Hepton's weary German commandant is the quiet star, a decent man running a prison he knows is a game of wits. Co-produced with Universal, it also features David McCallum and Robert Wagner across 28 episodes.
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The Sweeney (1975)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
This is where British cop shows left the studio. Euston Films shot The Sweeney on 16mm film almost entirely on location, so London itself, all scrapyards, pubs and half-demolished streets, becomes part of the cast. John Thaw's Jack Regan and Dennis Waterman's George Carter of the Flying Squad bend every rule to nail armed robbers, and their partnership is funnier and sadder than the car chases suggest.
Some attitudes have aged badly, but the energy hasn't. The fourth and final series reached Blu-ray in February 2026 in a new restoration from the original 16mm negatives, completing the set.
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Survivors (1975)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1975 BBC original, not the 2008 remake. Terry Nation's premise is brutal: a plague kills roughly 4,999 of every 5,000 people, and the handful left in rural England must work out how to grow food, make medicine and govern each other.
What makes it hold up is how practical it gets. There are no zombies and few villains, just arguments about who milks the cow and whether to share the seed corn. Series one is the tensest, with the first episode a genuinely chilling hour of TV; later series settle into slower community drama across 38 episodes in all.
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Days of Hope (1975)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The history drama for anyone who wants politics instead of costumes. Days of Hope follows a working-class family from 1916 to the General Strike of 1926, and Jim Allen's scripts, Tony Garnett's production and Ken Loach's direction make it the decade's angriest look back. It began as a single feature film before the BBC expanded it into four feature-length parts, about 410 minutes in all.
It started a row from the first episode, whose scene of conscientious objectors tied to stakes within range of enemy fire drew press criticism of how it showed the wartime army. Paul Copley, Pamela Brighton and Nikolas Simmonds lead as Ben, Sarah and Philip. It is unhurried and openly partisan, so come to it for the argument, not for comfort viewing.
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Poldark (1975)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1975 Poldark, not the 2015 remake. Robin Ellis plays Ross Poldark, home in late 18th-century Cornwall and trying to revive the family's derelict copper mines, and Angharad Rees's Demelza is the warmest, sharpest performance in the show.
Next to the remake it is slower and more interior, with long dialogue scenes and studio interiors doing much of the work. In return the 29 episodes give the class politics and the mining economics room to breathe, and the romance builds with real patience.
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When the Boat Comes In (1976)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
James Bolam's Jack Ford is one of the great charming chancers of British TV: a First World War veteran who comes home to the fictional North East town of Gallowshield and talks, hustles and organizes his way up, never quite on the side you expect.
James Mitchell wrote most of the episodes, and the dialogue has a hard, funny edge that keeps the poverty and politics from turning into worthy history. The story runs from 1919 to 1937 across 51 episodes; the early series, steeped in strikes and unemployment, are the strongest.
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Bouquet of Barbed Wire (1976)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1976 London Weekend Television serial, not the 2010 remake. Andrea Newman adapted her own 1969 novel about a publisher, Peter Manson, whose fixation on his grown daughter Prue curdles a comfortable suburban family, and Frank Finlay plays him with a discomfort you can feel through the screen.
It is suburban domestic drama rather than spectacle, all kitchens and living rooms, and its subject is deliberately uneasy. Viewers who like a tight, adult family drama will find it unusually frank for its time; anyone wanting comfort viewing should look elsewhere on this list.
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Rock Follies (1976)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The oddest entry here and one of the most rewarding: a musical drama about the Little Ladies, a rock group played by Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Julie Covington, being chewed up by the music business. Howard Schuman wrote the scripts and lyrics, Roxy Music's Andy Mackay wrote the songs, and the numbers are staged as stylized studio fantasies rather than concert footage.
Its view of how the industry treats women still stings. The first series won the 1977 BAFTA for best drama series, and its soundtrack album entered the UK chart at number one. The 12 episodes span two series.
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The Duchess of Duke Street (1976)
8.2/10on IMDb
First aired
For anyone who finishes Upstairs, Downstairs and wants more, this is the obvious next stop: John Hawkesworth, who produced that series, created this one for the BBC. Gemma Jones plays Louisa Trotter, a cook who works her way up to running her own London hotel, in a story loosely based on Rosa Lewis of the Cavendish Hotel.
It is a showcase for one strong lead. Louisa is stubborn, funny and often hard to like, and Jones never softens her. The 31 episodes are studio-bound and leisurely, so it rewards an evening-by-evening pace rather than a binge.
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I, Claudius (1976)
8.8/10on IMDb
First aired
If you watch one thing on this list, make it this. Shot on videotape in the studios at BBC Television Centre, with painted backdrops and very little action, it still plays like the best political thriller you have seen, because Jack Pulman's scripts and the cast do everything.
Derek Jacobi's stammering Claudius watches four emperors' worth of poisonings and plots; Siân Phillips's Livia is a masterclass in quiet menace; and a young Patrick Stewart, John Hurt and Brian Blessed are all there. It won three BAFTAs in 1977, including best actor for Jacobi. Twelve episodes, and some scenes of violence and sex are stronger than the studio look suggests.
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Secret Army (1977)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Yes, this is the show 'Allo 'Allo! parodied, and watching the original is a revelation: a tense, morally grey wartime drama about Lifeline, a Brussels-based escape line smuggling downed Allied airmen back to Britain, run partly from the Café Candide.
Gerard Glaister's series is at its best in the compromises: who gets sacrificed to keep the line open, and how the German officers hunting it are written as people rather than cartoons. It ran for three series and 43 episodes, and it gets darker and better as the occupation drags on.
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The Professionals (1977)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The pure action pick. Brian Clemens, a driving force behind The Avengers, created this all-film thriller about CI5, a fictional crime-and-terror squad, with Martin Shaw and Lewis Collins as agents Doyle and Bodie and Gordon Jackson as their gruff controller, Cowley.
It is less thoughtful than The Sweeney and knows it: the pleasure is the car chases, the banter and the brisk hour-long plots. Shaw and Collins's prickly chemistry carries it. With 57 episodes, it is ideal for dipping into rather than watching in order.
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Blake's 7 (1978)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Space opera on a BBC budget, and gloriously cynical with it. Terry Nation, who also created Survivors, wrote the whole first series about a band of convicts fighting a totalitarian Federation from a stolen alien ship. The heroes squabble and betray each other, and Paul Darrow's Avon, cold and sardonic, steals the show.
You will need to forgive the sets and the effects; they are part of the charm. The reward is a story that refuses easy victories, building over four series of 13 episodes to a famously bleak ending.
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All Creatures Great and Small (1978)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1978 BBC series, not the 2020 remake. The gentlest show on this list, and the one to put on when everything else feels too grim. Christopher Timothy's young James Herriot joins a vet practice in the 1930s Yorkshire Dales, and Robert Hardy's explosive Siegfried and Peter Davison's idle charmer Tristan make the Farnon brothers a double act for the ages.
It is drama with a lot of warmth and humor rather than a comedy, built on farm calls, difficult patients and even more difficult owners. The first three series, drawn directly from Herriot's books, are the core; the show returned in 1988 for four more.
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Pennies from Heaven (1978)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1978 BBC serial, not the 1981 Steve Martin film. Dennis Potter's masterpiece has Bob Hoskins as Arthur Parker, a sheet-music salesman in the mid-1930s whose drab, desperate life keeps bursting into song, the cast miming to real dance-band records of the era as fantasy breaks through.
The device sounds like a gimmick and turns out to be devastating: the sweeter the songs, the bleaker the story they interrupt. It is six episodes of about 75 minutes each, and the second half goes to very dark places, so treat it as a demanding adult drama, not a musical romp.
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Law & Order (1978)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
The 1978 BBC Two plays, nothing to do with the American franchise. G. F. Newman's four connected plays follow the same criminal case through four pairs of eyes: the detective, the villain, the lawyer and the prisoner. Les Blair directs in a flat, unglamorous style that makes it feel uncomfortably close to real life.
It caused a genuine scandal: MPs called for Newman to be arrested for sedition, and the press outcry meant the BBC could not sell it abroad. Watch it as the bleak flip side of The Sweeney, where nobody is a lovable rogue and the system itself is the problem.
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Out (1978)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The hidden gem of the decade's crime drama. Tom Bell's Frank Ross walks out of prison after eight years determined to find out who informed on his gang, and Trevor Preston's script follows him through a rain-soaked, sodium-lit London of old faces, new money and grudges.
Bell gives one of the great coiled, silent performances of British TV, and at six episodes it is a tight, single-season watch with a proper ending. Made by Euston Films, the team behind The Sweeney, it trades that show's swagger for something lonelier and more haunting.
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The Sandbaggers (1978)
8.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The anti-James Bond. Roy Marsden plays Neil Burnside, director of operations at Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, and most of the drama happens in offices: budget fights, turf wars with the Americans and impossible choices about which agent to risk. Ian Mackintosh, a former naval officer, wrote with a cold realism few spy shows have matched.
Be ready for the ending. Mackintosh was lost at sea in July 1979 while the third series was being made, and the show finishes on an unresolved cliffhanger. The 20 episodes are still worth every minute, especially for anyone who loved Tinker Tailor.
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Edward and Mrs Simpson (1978)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
If The Crown left you curious about the abdication, this is the seven-part Thames version from 1978, and it is still the most absorbing telling. Edward Fox plays Edward VIII as charming, petulant and hopelessly out of his depth, opposite Cynthia Harris as Wallis Simpson, and Simon Raven's scripts make the constitutional crisis play like a slow-motion thriller.
It is a lavish production by the standards of the day and won BAFTAs in 1979 for best actor, design, costume design and best series or serial. Expect drawing rooms and long telephone calls rather than spectacle.
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Danger UXB (1979)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Every episode has a built-in ticking clock. Anthony Andrews plays Lieutenant Brian Ash, a Royal Engineers officer defusing the thousands of unexploded bombs left in London during the Blitz, and the series never lets you forget that each new fuze design could kill the whole section.
The defusing scenes are as tense as anything in the decade, and the quieter episodes about the men's families and the strain of the work give them weight. It comes from John Hawkesworth and John Whitney, two of the minds behind Upstairs, Downstairs, and at 13 episodes it is an easy series to finish.
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