YouTube.
There’s more than a few channels that upload every episode almost immediately and you can pull the video via a download site by pasting in the URL if you want to archive them.
Some shows like Taskmaster just straight up upload their own shows as well.
I realize now how much WILTY, 8 Out of Cats Does Countdown, and Taskmaster bits I’ve watched on YT without ever the thought to download and archive them on my Plex server 🤦
Yeah, the BBC really doesn’t seem to give a fuck.
There’s accounts that have been doing it for years
These videos are often region blocked in the UK, tbf
BBC is funded by the public, thus everything they produce belongs to the public. Kinda. If you live in the UK and pay for a TV licence, you can do pretty much anything with their content.
Do anything in what way?
In any non commercial way. Or even commercial with a licence. They actually ask you to obtain permission to any use, but that’s because not all of their content is their own creation and their legal team must work out which parts you can use and which are covered by 3rd parties.
If you want to automate that a bit, set up https://github.com/meeb/tubesync.
It’ll watch any YouTube playlists you specify (I created one called “Save to Plex”) and automatically download them and import them into Plex. Adding videos is as easy as sticking them into your playlist from whatever YouTube client you use.
Yeah I just plugged some of those playlists into JDownloader and got a shitload of stuff pretty easy
Off the seven seas? Try Britbox. Relatively affordable, no ads whatsoever. They’ve got Cats does Countdown, QI, Mock the Week etc.
Keep this quiet, but VPN to UK and sign up for channel 4. They have commercials, but UK does much funnier commercials than across the pond.
I’ve been doing this for a few years using AirVPN but it seems like that stopped working after January 1st. Videos would not play unless I used the NordVPN browser plugin, this seems to be a workaround for some VPN restrictions. I do enjoy the commercials!
Like a Bosch!
Oh how dare you get it stuck in my head 🤣
As much as I don’t like recommending people go to reddit, tbh r/panelshow and r/tv_bunny tend to cover most of it pretty well, and quickly too. TV Bunny has been a good source for old British sitcoms like Bottom and Blackadder as well.
Bottom is on archive and Blackadder is on every torrent tracker.
I’d settle for a good place to get QI.
Look to the bay of the high seas. There might be some torrential conditions.
There used to be, but the seas are calm these days.
You could also USE a NET. I’ve seen people catch things that way quite recently.
Britbox has all the series since the start, when Stephen Fry was presenting.
VPN to Australia and sign up for ABC iView for free
Specifically, Nevermind the Buzzcocks. There’s only a handful of episodes left on youtube, and the rest of them have been replaced with horribly edited down clips from BBC.
bbc has a number of them on bbc sounds for free