You know what, we really miss our British telly. Don’t get us wrong, North American shows are OK for the most part … but we sometimes get a hankering for that plummy British accent reading the news, or acting out some drama.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to watch British TV for free in Canada? [Us looking up into the sky, dreamily mulling that thought over as the picture wobbles and undulates while the camera zooms in …]

Thanks to Youk TV you can! Not content with just throwing a quick link onto Twitter, we fired up the e-mail, reached out to the guys and asked them what’s it all about then, mate?

And here’s what they said:

When was the site created? What was the reason — did you think that the niche wasn’t being met for the needs of Brits abroad missing their telly?

The plans for it started about one year ago. We wanted an easy and free way to access British TV channels when travelling or living abroad. We felt that there was no really easy way online, that focused purely on British TV.

There’s a lot of complicated ways, and many are worth investing in if you will permanently live abroad — but if you travel, or if you are on the go, i.e. on the bus or the Tube etc., we felt that there should be an easier way.

How many people are behind it and what is the workload in running it?

There’s currently three of us working with the project. It’s not something we do full time and it’s not a project with the goal to become millionaires.

Behind it is a British girl living abroad, and two Swedish guys that lived permanently in England for many years, but now live in other parts of the world.

How are the bandwidth streaming costs covered?

We are partners to the content provider. They host the service, and we are allowed to broadcast the content in exchange for possible ad revenue going back to them.

Do you have plans for more than 20 channels?

At the moment there’s no plans to expand to more channels, but we are working on a way to be able to record shows, which we hope would be really helpful!

Anything else you want to tell our large audience of Brits in Toronto?

I would just like to say that it’s great that people appreciate the service; we’ve had some great feedback during the short period of time we’ve been active, and it’s a great incentive to keep working on it!

If you like the service, it’s much appreciated if you spread the word to your mates at the pub, and of course on social media!