As you'd expect, in most ways the Golden Globes TV nominations remind us that there has been some excellent stuff on the small screen in 2013. The brilliant end to Breaking Bad, Jane Campion's haunting Top of the Lake, the self-assured chutzpah of Behind the Candelabra. Brits are well represented, too, with seven nominees – including Helen Mirren, Idris Elba and Helena Bonham Carter – in the acting categories. However, a worrying trend has emerged: the fact that Hollywood's fascination with British costume drama seems to come in spite of, rather than because of, the quality of the programmes in question.
The chief example of this is the prominence of BBC One's The White Queen in the nominations – it is up for Best Mini-Series and also in two acting categories. This version of Philippa Gregory's novels about the Wars of the Roses was scorned by British critics. Its language was anachronistic and everything seemed to end up in the bedchamber. It was history as Mills and Boon, with no respect for the fabric of the time. Indeed it had no respect for the actual fabric of the time – a visible 21st-century zip was one of many historical faux pas.
The hitherto unknown Rebecca Ferguson played the White Queen herself, Elizabeth Woodville, one of the most charismatic women of the 15th century. Yet Ferguson turned her into an empty-eyed beauty incapable of emoting, let alone ruling. While Janet McTeer merely made the best of the stream of clichés she had to utter as Woodville's scheming mother. Both Ferguson and McTeer are up for Globes.
It seems that Hollywood is so entranced by the fact that we Brits have any history at all that it bypasses its critical faculties when confronted by our costume dramas. Just look at Downton Abbey (nominated in the Best TV Series – Drama category). Every year it gets nominated. Even the poor series two was up for a gong, the salient moment of which featured Matthew Crawley making a medically impossible recovery from impotency.
A more deserving nominee than The White Queen for Best Mini Series this year is BBC Two's Dancing on the Edge, which, although it failed to say anything coherent about the 1930s jazz age in which it was set, was a drama of intelligence. Chiwetel Ejiofor was spellbinding in the lead and his Best Actor nod is a good call, but Jacqueline Bisset in the Supporting Actress category is unfathomable. Bisset's performance was the most stilted of any in the drama. Yet perhaps because she played an aristocrat in a photogenic period of fading gentrification, all those who viewers who dreamed of stately piles and green acres were a little in love with her.
It's true that no-one does costume drama quite like the Brits, but it seems as if the Globes voters are swept away by the idea of heritage and too susceptible to the allure of a pretty lady in a nice frock to provide a useful barometer of when these programmes are actually any good.
