So we just re-ran Buffy the Vampire Slayer and we're almost at the end of Angel, and as an English couple we were amused (and often horrified) at Whedon's almost maniacal insistence on having Americans attempt to pull off English accents, usually with comically disastrous results.
First of all, folks, there's no such thing as a British accent. Britain is a nation made up of four countries. You can have an English accent, or a Welsh accent, or a Scottish accent, or an Irish accent, but you can't have a British accent, because there's no such thing as a British accent. Don't argue the toss with me, Yanks, you don't live here, and contrary to popular belief you're not an expert on this country just because you watch Doctor Who.
Anyhow. As much as I love Buffy and Angel, those shows regularly got it wrong when it comes to English accents. Was it really that fucking hard to find English actors? They had one. Two if you count Ethan Rayne, but no-one does. Every other "English" accent was fucking atrocious. Spike mostly got it right, but he kept pronouncing "bollocks" like "boll-icks", and that's wrong. Think "boll-ucks", and half the battle's done for ya. Wesley got a lot better, although certain words still come out wrong. But Drusilla, as much as I loved her, really had no fucking clue. Angel's Irish accent was a joke, and the less said about that annoying-ass potential Slayer in Season 7 of Buffy, the better.
A non-British actor pretending to be a British character tends to get the accent either a) wrong, b) generic (with exaggeratedly posh Received Pronunciation as the most used accent, blame The BBC), rather than specific to a British country or c) too Cockney (think the accent that Bart Simpson adopts whenever he pretends to be a Londoner). In fact, Received Pronunciation and Cockney (and the middle-class compromise between the two, Estuary English) are pretty much the most commonly imitated English accents by American actors, the failures of which are typically derided by British audiences as pretentiously ridiculous.
Accent type b), the generic "British accent" (and remember, there's no such thing) is common with English characters on American TV, even if they're being played by actual British people. British do not sound like this on a general basis. Shit, since English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh people all have different accents, and each country in Great Britain also has it's own set of regional dialects... well, can you see where I'm going with this?
The most glaring error in fake "British" accents stems from American English's lack of the short "o" (IPA: [ɒ]) sound with which the English, specifically, pronounce words such as "pot" and "orange". Americans tend to hypercorrect this to the long "o" sound as in "all" or "door". This is fucking wrong.
Stop, for the love of God, stop.
HOW NOT TO DO IT
(Audio only)
I can't find a video of Molly The Potential Slayer With The Worst Fucking Fake English Accent Of All Time, so here's a video of her getting stabbed to death.
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