I think, also, British viewers (or English, anyway) will have a greater exposure to American television than Americans do to British.

So, I think an English teenager could easily work out what’s going on in the social networks surrounding Claire Bennet of Heroes, because s/he’s seen a mediated American high school milieu, with its cheerleaders and cliques, in so many other shows and movies — whereas an American teenager watching Hollyoaks (a soap set in Chester) wouldn’t necessarily have such a frame of reference.

(The same would be true, I’d guess, of an London viewer tuning in cold to CSI: New York, compared to a NYC viewer tuning in to The Bill).

I’d suggest that most English viewers have seen enough American texts to recognise the social codes and to have a mediated cultural memory that is enough to make sense of a whole range of US TV and cinema — as long as it stays roughly within those codes.

So, an English viewer would, I would say, know immediately enough about TV and movie high schools to get to grips with Glee — but The Wire was something fairly unfamiliar except to people who’ve read a lot of Richard Price and George Pelecanos.

As for your question concerning the necessity of Wikipedia and the difference between Misfits and, say, The Wire, scroll down to Jason’s post directly below.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fanny

Whether E4 is like HBO could be easily cleared up online without any risk of spoilers.

Who wrote the show, what authorial context and background they might bring, and whether the stars have any significant history in other shows, could also be googled for or checked up on imdb very safely.

Other aspects I think are more complex than your post seems to imply: you seem to be distinguishing between a relatively clueless American viewer, to whom the show is a bit of a puzzle, and “Brits and members of the “commonwealth”” who would get all these references right away.

I’d suggest that even British people within Scotland and Wales, let alone in further-flung cultures, might not immediately understand some references. “Boot” for “trunk” is surely pretty universal, but different regions have different terms meaning the same thing as “chav”, and I don’t know whether many people outside Greater London would recognise the location (Thamesmead) and its connotations.

So, it isn’t as simple as a “Brit”/Other divide – “British” is no more meaningful than “American” in that, obviously, it brackets together multiple, diverse cultures of region, class, ethnicity, even nation.

As for what other shows require Wikipedia – I’d suggest Mad Men certainly benefits from it, and that The Wire probably needs Wikipedia as much as Misfits? That is, I feel you can probably understand each of them just fine through context – picking up the lingo and the references as you go – but The Wire certainly isn’t instantly-comprehensible to a London viewer.

But I suspect many Americans would also find aspects of The Wire unfamiliar to them, and would also have to pick it up as they went along. Just as living in America doesn’t mean you understand the slang of Baltimore cops and dealers, being British doesn’t mean you’re familiar with the argot of Thamesmead teenagers.

As for Annie’s point about what other shows require us to go to Wikipedia: David Simon has actually said that his shows are built for the internet age, not because they foster online fan communities (as that’s far less prevalent than on other contemporary cult shows) but because they empower viewers to learn more about something that is obliquely presented on screen. The example he cites is the Mardi Gras Indians in Treme – it’s a major plotline for a main character, and we see a lot of Indian prep & performance. But the show never explains the tradition or context – if you want to learn more, you need to do a little research.

I’d say such need for context is fairly typical of cinema. If you stumbled upon a Godard or Antonioni film in the video store, you’d probably not understand its importance & innovations without a contextual history and frame of reference. Film studies has been helping contextualize such works for decades – and now TV scholars need to get into the game.

When I taught at Whitman (a private liberal arts college) there are no policies against downloading, and it and illegal streaming is widespread. It absolutely changed the breadth of programming with which students had experience coming into a television studies class.

They’re also watching on their computers, as very, very few have televisions (mostly just those who live off-campus during their senior year, and even then, they most likely do not have cable).

I suppose what we’re both trying to get it is the fact that it’d be really great to be able to expect our students to be well-versed television consumers, but the realities of schedules and varying levels of technological skill make it so that, just like in a film class, there will be a small handful of students who have committed themselves to the task, yet the vast majority will have but a smattering of knowledge of the quotidian television options for the ‘average’ citizen.

Though the counter to this is that they watch very little UK TV, when their tendency towards E4 and downloading is combined, which is another problem in itself (though thank god for iplayer and 4OD. I also find that downloading really hits its steam when students get to halls and realise they don’t have any hope of decent television reception/have upside down schedules so turn to online to keep track of shows.