Mad Men is a Sky production...
Sorry to be picking nits, but Mad Men is produced by Lionsgate. If it's shown on Sky I guess they have the rights to air it in the UK.
To add to what Bitt said (I agreed with all of that): In the US the broadcasters unfortunately believe that nobody will watch a British show, so instead they remake it. The Office, Life on Mars, and several others have all been remade, with The Office really being the only success.
*edit* As usual, there's a
Wikipedia article for that. I haven't looked through that list completely, but I still think my statement holds. Technically, I suppose the most successful remake would be American Idol. But I typically don't count "reality" TV in any discussion I have, and most of that list seems to be reality TV. Or, more inclusively, non-scripted TV like Antiques Roadshow.
They often cut the episodes down a little, though. I've never really been clear on why.
Surely that is mainly due to fitting them into the time slot, given that the UK shows have relatively little adverts (or none at all).
In the case of Downton Abbey, it's being shown on PBS, which doesn't have advertisements and is viewer supported (and used to be government supported). There's not much keeping them from running the full show.
Now to counter my own point: my guess is that they trim the episodes so as not to run over into the timeslot of a popular show on a competing network. Also, the average American TV viewer would get confused, and we wouldn't want that
We only just recently got them used to the idea of a 55-minute show on HBO and Showtime!
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