I'm British. I think it's both a cultural thing and a sponsorship thing. And the mighty BBC aren't the ones to thank - Channel4/Film4 also puts a lot of (partially governmental) money into fresh talent, and we have a history of playwright culture being interwoven in University life, hence the references in this thread to Cambidge's Footlights.

Cultural differences - the British see ego as arrogance, so we tend to err towards self-deprication. I do like American comedy, it's good to 'switch off' too - there's no thought required, which is perfect after a hard days' work (Frasier, Friends, all good). All the jokes are explained, all the complexities of life simplified, and that makes it easy, lowest-common-denominator fare. It happens on Star Trek too; when they come up with an idea to save themselves ("We just need to reverse the polarity and setup a temporal vortex to..."), someone sums up the idea for the idiots ("TIME TRAVEL!"). I suppose it's to make sure more people watch it, so the sponsors and the shareholders are happy; not a particular consideration in Britain where we're more concerned with being funny (rather the point of a comedy show..).

So in Britain, we have a different culture - we tend to look down on ignorance (although that seems to be changing subtly in recent years), so don't simplify life to make it more accessible or glamourise mundanity to make it more appealing, we see value in telling it how it is, perhaps because schmaltz is easy to see through, and therefore just escapism. Plus we like talking bolx.

Dutch humour is similar to English, German humour (where it exists) is much more like American. French is very... French.

British humour isn't necessarily better, it's just always been geared more towards high-brow viewers and therefore more complex in its subtleties and more diverse in its presentation.

Apart from Benny Hill, who is rubbish.