Another series Simon is very proud of is not an import, but rather an original series co-produced by BBC America. Copper is a gritty crime drama packed with history.
Set in New York City during what Simon calls "the last gasps of the Civil War," Copper revolves around Detective Kevin Corcoran, an intense, rugged Irish immigrant who travels the seedy Five Points neighborhood but also the wealthy Upper East Side and the northern, largely African-American part of the city. Simon says Copper gave BBC America its highest-rated drama ever.
As for PBS, they had a hit with a series that is divinely unconventional. Call the Midwife is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth. When she was 22, she left her middle-class life and became a midwife with the nuns at a convent in a poor part of London in the 1950s.
In the U.K., the TV series was a sensation, every bit as popular as that other period phenomenon, Downton Abbey. Call the Midwife Executive Producer Pippa Harris says when she first read Worth's books, she knew it was a TV series in the making.
"The episodic nature of her storytelling and the big ensemble cast, but also the mixture of humor and pathos [...] within the storylines that she tells, all of which made me think it would be brilliant television," says Harris.
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