British ruin TV shows with foreground music.

This isn't to say British shows are bad. This isn't to say so-and-so other people do it better. This is to observe how prominently British TV shows will often use very obvious selections of (previously released) songs, and over-do it.

Sometimes I'm shocked they would even get the rights to all those songs. Sometimes the songs seem to "big" to use in a small time TV show. Other times it seems lazy, to let the foregrounded song "carry" so much of the affect, so much of the time. It feels like they don't think about whether the song is really really artistically appropriate -- they just slap on a song they like, like the show is their playlist. It feels to me like either such big songs should be brought as foreground only sparingly and with real thoughtfulness, or as part of the background (giving clues to place/time etc).