Despite their best efforts to keep up with the times, our Anglo-Saxon friends seem as powerless to resist the televised allure of fancy regalia, polished accents and expensive set design. Just look at the number of historical dramas in recent British television history that have become hits with Her Majesty's subjects and beyond.Downton Abbey is a staple in any anglophile's viewing diet and is due for its sixth and final season later this month. Last year Wolf Hall, a sumptuous adaptation of Hillary Mantel's tome about Cromwellian intrigue and royal chicanery, cemented itself as a strong contender for this year's awards season. Shows like Poldark, Peaky Blinders, Home Fires and Mr Selfridge have also helped keep the cogs of the UK's nostalgia machine oiled.Even Sherlock, starring the ever rakish Benedict Cumberbatch, is airing a once-off Victorian-themed special. Oddly, the misty-eyed remembrance stops not long after World War 2.It's as though the trauma of that event caused a nationwide cultural dysmorphia, that has left modern Britain looking in the mirror and seeing the cultural hegemony they used to be instead of something resembling the old codger at a bar heckling youngsters to buy him a drink.To be fair, British television is not all backward glances at a glorious past that can't be returned to. The crime dramas, like Luther, Sherlock (the regular series) and Midsomer Murders are both popular and firmly in the present.Equally urban youth dramas like the legendary Skins, and to a much lesser extent Youngers, have taken modern edginess to a sharp edge and spawned American rip-offs. In comedy they're not above leaving Blackadder somewhere deep in history's annals.Perhaps the problem is, from a television perspective, modern Britain is ugly and, even worse, boring.Aesthetically, 21st-century England, especially London, is a confusing bricolage of ''old country" areas that have had to make space for modern development. Add the constant gloom and you have to ask: What kind of person would want to watch that kind of scenery?And so for the sake of their sanity, and ours, the good old Brits often stroll down memory lane, to a place where the décor matched, they were still cool and Chavs hadn't discovered bling.Upcoming British historical dramasSherlock, The Abominable Bride (once off special): Watch Mr Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) come over all Victorian tonight on DStv channel 119 at 8pm.Downton Abbey S6: The final season of this etiquette masterclass begins on Sunday, DStv channel 119 at 8:10pm.Peaky Blinders S1: Cillian Murphy is brilliant in this post WWI crime drama. Catch it on DStv channel 119 on January 13 at 9pm.Churchill's Secret: This tale of how Winston Churchill kept his stroke from the world will air at 10:30pm on Sunday, DStv channel 123...