The prefix dominates our screens, from shows about baking to pottery to rivers. But its twee origins are now becoming shorthand for post-Brexit chest-puffing
• Modern Toss on The Great
British TV shows
In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it
The novelist Jonathan Coe tweeted this summer: “Looking at tonight’s TV guide, I see BBC2 is offering us Great British Railway Journeys followed by Great British Menu, with The Great British Sewing Bee over on BBC1. Plus a Panorama report called ‘Am I British?’” He forgot to mention The Great British Photography Challenge on
BBC Four. In fact, you can barely slump slack-jawed in front of the box nowadays without being force-fed Greatness and Britishness until you feel bilious.