London is more than a backdrop—it’s a character in its own right. The British capital has provided settings for countless television productions, from the fog-shrouded Victorian streets of Sherlock Holmes to the gleaming towers of contemporary financial thrillers. London’s neighborhoods each possess distinct personalities, and television has explored them all: the genteel squares of West London, the multicultural energy of the East End, the political machinations of Westminster, and the creative chaos of Soho.
What makes London television distinctive is the city’s layered history. A single street might have witnessed Roman settlement, medieval plague, Georgian elegance, Victorian industry, Blitz destruction, and 21st-century gentrification. Television set in London can tap into any of these eras—or all of them simultaneously.
London also offers television something less tangible: an atmosphere that combines cosmopolitan sophistication with village-like neighborhoods, global importance with eccentric localism. Characters in London television navigate class, culture, and community in ways specific to this particular city.
Here are 25 television shows that capture London in all its complexity.
1. Sherlock (2010-2017)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 4
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, Andrew Scott, Una Stubbs
Setting: Contemporary Central London
Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s modern Holmes relocated Conan Doyle’s detective to 21st-century London, using the city’s landmarks and technology brilliantly. The show transformed recognizable locations—Bart’s Hospital, the London Eye, Battersea Power Station—into stages for deduction and drama. Baker Street remained home, but this was London as a modern global city, filled with smartphones and CCTV. The cinematography made London itself beautiful and dangerous.
2. Luther (2010-2019)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 5
Starring: Idris Elba, Ruth Wilson, Warren Brown
Setting: East London
Idris Elba’s DCI John Luther hunted serial killers through a stylized, noir-ish London of industrial spaces and rain-slicked streets. The show used London’s grimier architecture—car parks, tower blocks, Victorian warehouses—to create an urban landscape of moral ambiguity. Luther’s London was dangerous and atmospheric, a city where evil could hide in plain sight.
3. EastEnders (1985-present)
Network: BBC One
Episodes: 6,000+
Setting: Fictional Walford, East London
The BBC’s flagship soap has depicted East End life for nearly four decades, centering on the fictional Albert Square. EastEnders has tackled issues from domestic violence to homophobia, from HIV to hate crime, while telling the everyday stories of a London community. The show’s London is working-class, multicultural, and constantly changing while somehow remaining the same.
4. Killing Eve (2018-2022)
Network: BBC America/BBC One
Seasons: 4
Starring: Sandra Oh, Jodie Comer, Fiona Shaw
Setting: London and Europe
While spanning multiple countries, Killing Eve’s MI5 sequences rooted the show in London’s intelligence world. The contrast between Eve’s chaotic domestic life and Villanelle’s glamorous assassinations across Europe began from a London starting point. The show used London as the base from which its international cat-and-mouse game launched.
5. Call the Midwife (2012-present)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 13+
Starring: Jenny Agutter, Vanessa Redgrave, Jessica Raine
Setting: 1950s-1960s East London
The midwives of Nonnatus House serve the working-class community of Poplar in this long-running drama. The show recreates post-war East London with loving detail—the docks, the tenements, the bomb sites still being cleared. Call the Midwife shows a London now largely disappeared, when communities lived in close proximity and healthcare came to your door.
6. Downton Abbey (2010-2015)
Network: ITV
Note: Primarily Yorkshire-set, but London sequences significant
[Removing as not primarily London-based]
6. Upstairs, Downstairs (1971-1975, 2010-2012)
Network: ITV/BBC One
Seasons: 5 (original), 2 (revival)
Starring: Jean Marsh, Gordon Jackson, Keeley Hawes
Setting: Belgravia
165 Eaton Place, in London’s most prestigious address, housed the Bellamy family and their servants. The original series traced social change from the Edwardian era through the 1930s, with London society as its stage. The 2010 revival brought the formula to the late 1930s, with war looming. Both versions used London’s aristocratic West End as a world of rigid hierarchy slowly crumbling.
7. Peaky Blinders (Seasons 5-6)
Network: BBC One
Note: Birmingham-based but London sequences crucial
[Removing as not primarily London-based]
7. Gangs of London (2020-present)
Network: Sky Atlantic
Seasons: 2
Starring: Joe Cole, Sope Dirisu, Michelle Fairley
Setting: Contemporary London
This violent crime drama depicted London as a battleground for international criminal organizations. Following the assassination of a crime lord, various factions—British, Irish, Pakistani, Kurdish—fought for control. The show presented London as a truly global city whose underworld reflects its multicultural population, with brutal action sequences across diverse neighborhoods.
8. Spooks (2002-2011)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 10
Starring: Peter Firth, Keeley Hawes, Matthew Macfadyen, Hermione Norris
Setting: Thames House and Greater London
MI5’s counterterrorism officers worked from Thames House, near the real intelligence headquarters, protecting London and the nation from threats. The show used recognizable London locations—the South Bank, Westminster Bridge, the City—as stages for espionage and action. Spooks presented London as both target and fortress, vulnerable to attack yet defended by dedicated operatives.
9. Humans (2015-2018)
Network: Channel 4
Seasons: 3
Starring: Gemma Chan, Katherine Parkinson, Colin Morgan
Setting: Near-future London suburbs
This science fiction drama imagined London slightly ahead of our time, where synthetic humans served as domestic help. The show used familiar suburban settings—Synth servants at school gates, in shops, on buses—to make its near-future feel immediate. London’s diversity and domestic spaces became the stage for questions about consciousness and exploitation.
10. London’s Burning (1988-2002)
Network: ITV
Seasons: 14
Starring: Glen Murphy, Craig Fairbrass, Sean Blowers
Setting: South-East London
Blue Watch at Blackwall Fire Station became Britain’s most famous fictional firefighters during this long-running drama. The show combined action sequences with personal storylines, using the fire service to explore London’s working-class communities. London’s Burning presented the city as a place of constant danger—fires, accidents, emergencies—requiring heroic response.
11. The Hour (2011-2012)
Network: BBC Two
Seasons: 2
Starring: Ben Whishaw, Romola Garai, Dominic West
Setting: 1950s BBC London
This period drama followed journalists at a BBC current affairs program during the Suez Crisis. The show recreated 1950s BBC Lime Grove with loving detail, exploring post-war London’s combination of austerity and emerging modernity. The Hour captured a specific London moment when television was new and the establishment was about to be challenged.
12. Silent Witness (1996-present)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 27+
Starring: Emilia Fox, David Caves, William Gaminara
Setting: London (Lyell Centre)
The forensic pathologists of the Lyell Centre have investigated crimes across London for nearly three decades. The show uses London’s diversity—from wealthy enclaves to deprived estates—as settings for its mysteries. Silent Witness presents London as a city where death can happen anywhere and forensic science works to uncover truth.
13. This Life (1996-1997)
Network: BBC Two
Seasons: 2
Starring: Jack Davenport, Daniela Nardini, Andrew Lincoln
Setting: 1990s Southwark
This drama about young lawyers sharing a house in South London defined 1990s youth television. The show captured a specific London moment—post-Thatcher, pre-millennium—when Southwark was gentrifying and young professionals were establishing themselves. The characters’ personal and professional dramas played out against a London in transition.
14. Minder (1979-1994, 2009)
Network: ITV
Seasons: 10
Starring: Dennis Waterman, George Cole, Gary Webster
Setting: West London
Arthur Daley’s dodgy dealings and Terry McCann’s muscle created a comic vision of London’s criminal underworld. The show’s West London—lock-ups, markets, pubs—presented a city of wheeler-dealers and loveable rogues. Minder became iconic, its theme song (“I Could Be So Good for You”) a chart hit, its slang entering common usage.
15. Industry (2020-present)
Network: BBC Two/HBO
Seasons: 2+
Starring: Myha’la Herrold, Marisa Abela, Harry Lawtey
Setting: City of London
This drama about young graduates competing at a London investment bank captured the City’s ruthless culture. The glass towers of Canary Wharf and the City proper provided settings for ambition, exploitation, and excess. Industry presented London’s financial district as a world of extreme pressure where privilege and talent collide.
16. Pulling (2006-2009)
Network: BBC Three
Seasons: 2
Starring: Sharon Horgan, Tanya Franks, Rebekah Staton
Setting: South London
This cult comedy followed three female friends navigating single life in London. The show’s South London—pubs, flats, disappointing dates—felt authentically unglamorous. Pulling captured London as experienced by ordinary young women, not the glossy city of romantic comedies but a place of awkward encounters and crushing hangovers.
17. Top Boy (2011-2023)
Network: Channel 4/Netflix
Seasons: 5
Starring: Ashley Walters, Kane Robinson, Michael Ward
Setting: Hackney, East London
This crime drama depicted drug dealing on a Hackney estate with unflinching realism. The show explored how poverty and lack of opportunity trap young people in criminal lives, using East London locations to ground its drama in recognizable reality. Top Boy presented a London rarely shown on television—dangerous, deprived, but also full of human complexity.
18. Life on Mars (2006-2007)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 2
Starring: John Simm, Philip Glenister
Setting: 1973 Manchester primarily, but London connections
[Removing as Manchester-based]
18. Ripper Street (2012-2016)
Network: BBC One/Amazon Prime
Seasons: 5
Starring: Matthew Macfadyen, Jerome Flynn, Adam Rothenberg
Setting: 1889-1899 Whitechapel
Set in Whitechapel immediately after Jack the Ripper’s murders, this drama explored Victorian London’s East End at its most notorious. The show recreated the poverty, violence, and moral complexity of a neighborhood living in the Ripper’s shadow. London as the world’s largest city was also its most dangerous, and Whitechapel represented its darkest corner.
19. Absolutely Fabulous (1992-2012)
Network: BBC One/BBC Two
Seasons: 5
Starring: Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha
Setting: Holland Park and media London
Edina and Patsy’s fashion-victim excesses played out in a London of PR agencies, fashion shows, and increasingly desperate attempts to stay relevant. The show satirized a specific London world—the media and fashion industries—while Edina’s Holland Park house became a stage for champagne-soaked chaos. Ab Fab’s London was simultaneously glamorous and ridiculous.
20. Fleabag (2016-2019)
Network: BBC Three/BBC One
Seasons: 2
Starring: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sian Clifford, Olivia Colman
Setting: Contemporary London
Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s confessional comedy was set in a specific London of guinea pig cafés, family restaurants, and church halls in North London. The show used London settings that felt authentic to its characters’ middle-class creative world, from gallery openings to awkward family dinners. Fleabag’s London was a place of opportunity and loneliness in equal measure.
21. Hustle (2004-2012)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 8
Starring: Robert Vaughn, Adrian Lester, Robert Glenister
Setting: Central London
This stylish drama followed a team of con artists pulling elaborate scams across London. The show used London’s mix of wealth and tourists as the perfect setting for confidence tricks, from the City to the West End. Hustle presented London as a playground for the clever, where the gullible wealthy deserved whatever they lost.
22. Doctor Who (2005-present)
Network: BBC One
Showrunners: Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Chris Chibnall
Setting: London frequently featured
While Doctor Who travels everywhere, London has been a constant touchstone—from the Tyler family’s Powell Estate to the numerous alien invasions centered on the capital. The show has destroyed London landmarks repeatedly while celebrating the city’s ordinary people. Doctor Who’s London is simultaneously mundane and cosmic, where estates and spaceships coexist.
23. Whitechapel (2009-2013)
Network: ITV
Seasons: 4
Starring: Rupert Penry-Jones, Phil Davis, Steve Pemberton
Setting: Contemporary Whitechapel
This crime drama placed modern murders in dialogue with historical ones, beginning with a Jack the Ripper copycat. The show used Whitechapel’s layered history—its streets still bearing traces of Victorian London beneath modern development—to create an atmosphere of uncanny repetition. London’s East End remained haunted by its past.
24. Secret Diary of a Call Girl (2007-2011)
Network: ITV2
Seasons: 4
Starring: Billie Piper, Iddo Goldberg, Cherie Lunghi
Setting: Various London locations
Based on the blog of a real London sex worker, this drama followed Belle’s double life as high-end escort and ordinary young woman. The show used London’s geography—expensive hotels, suburban flats, bars and restaurants—to explore how the city facilitated both fantasy and reality, wealth and desperation.
25. The Capture (2019-present)
Network: BBC One
Seasons: 2
Starring: Holliday Grainger, Callum Turner, Ron Perlman
Setting: Contemporary London
This thriller about falsified CCTV evidence used London’s surveillance state as setting and subject. The city of cameras—watching every street, every tube station, every shop—became central to a plot about how truth can be manufactured. The Capture presented London as a city where you’re always being watched, and where that watching can be weaponized.
Conclusion
London television reflects the city’s extraordinary range—from the privileged squares of Belgravia to the tower blocks of Hackney, from Victorian rookeries to gleaming financial towers. The best London-set television uses the city not merely as backdrop but as essential element, finding in its streets and neighborhoods the stories that could only happen there.
What emerges from these 25 shows is a portrait of a city of contradictions: wealthy and deprived, historic and modern, dangerous and nurturing. London television captures the experience of living in a global metropolis that somehow retains neighborhood identities, where history is visible in every street but change is constant.
For viewers wanting to explore London through television, these shows offer entry points to different eras, different neighborhoods, and different experiences of the capital. Together they map a city too vast and varied for any single show to capture, but which emerges collectively as one of television’s most compelling settings.
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