My 'nostalgia' is mostly 90's based, and I wasn't a child then. I liked a lot of tv drama from around that time, such as xfiles, Morse, early Midsommer and comedy such as Father Ted. Anyone recall that crazy nativity themed show with adults playing children, with Jane Horriocks?
I don't think this is merely nostalgia, either. The word is often used to demote something of value, I find.
The world has altered a great deal in the past 40 years, through which many of us here have been alive. It isn't so much nostalgia (a rather twee term), but more an awareness of how context and attitudes alter over time.
Sadly, when I watch a lot of older stuff from the UK on youtube, such as 'play for today' or 'screen two', I see far too many unpleasant comments complaining about there being too many 'dark skinned' people now, how life was so much better then when women didn't demand rights.
Who are these tools and why do they populate my fave tv?? Aaagh!
So I don't read the comments now, or search for things on DailyMotion, where most of the best stuff resides.
My personal faves were Sapphire and Steele, folk horror type stuff such as the BBC ghost stories, especially Robin Redbreast with the wonderful Anna Cropper.
I also loved the less famous shows like Travelling Man with Leigh Lawson, The Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (less boobs more brain), Jonathan Miller's great series 'The Body in Question', and those slow moving, dreamy nature documentaries that didn't dumb everything down for 'younger viewers' (I'm side eyeing you, BBC).
Also loved the Wexford mysteries and those wonderful adaptations of Ruth Rendell stories.
What I do notice now is that what we might call class has been blended in tv shows and drama, so there is more focus on what I would call the comfortable working class (home owners, money to spend, with traditional WC values) particularly on itvx and Netflix. There used to be more of a defined difference in presentation prior to the last 10 years or so, whereas now it seems rare to find anything that I'd recognise to be bog standard middle class representation, apart from the twee offerings the BBC flips out such as those awful Lucy Worsley programmes.
Perhaps the bog standard MC has been squeezed out. We either see drama about the very well off or the home owning WC. Saying that, I am very happy to see more regional accents across tv drama now, especially some of the great stuff coming out of Wales.