ABSTRACT
Building on findings from Screen Encounters with Britain, this chapter explores young audiences’ motivations for seeking out British productions, and the attributes and values they recognise as distinctly ‘British’. It identifies the English language and humour as the strongest motivations and values alongside quality perceptions based on authenticity, relatability and relevance, qualities that many young viewers in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy associate with recent youth-oriented British shows. The chapter makes a theoretical contribution by reassessing theories about content preferences based on ‘geocultural’ or ‘geo-linguistic’ proximity. It does so by redefining the concept of linguistic proximity and exploring transnational conceptualisations that foreground shared human traits. These include notions of ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘emotional’ proximities, ’life-world relevance’ and ‘practical sense making’.
