There's something about the way "real" Brits speak in regular conversation that's different than the way Brit actors speak. I don't know exactly what it is. Maybe it's that all of the famous actors from England are all from the same town or something, and I've just gotten used to that regional dialect.

Generic south-eastern England accents are certainly more common in the media than accents of most other British regions. There are a lot of different British regional accents, and I bet few Americans are familiar with most or all of them.

For instance, the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Stoke, and Birmingham are only a few dozen miles apart, but those five accents sound completely different. People's resolving power for accents usually depends very strongly on proximity to their place of birth: to me, a Yorkshire accent is a Yorkshire accent, but most Yorkshiremen can tell which part of Yorkshire a speaker comes from, and (allegedly) Yorkshire dalesmen can tell which valley.

Perhaps someone should start a "Guide To British Regional Accents, With Examples From The Mass Media"...

But of course, none of that helps in dealing with mixed accents (for instance, mine: my parents are from Yorkshire and Surrey, I grew up near Stoke, then Manchester, and now live in Cambridge). Frankly, it's a wonder anyone can understand me: all my Northern friends say I've got an unmistakable Southern accent, and vice versa.

Do Americans perceive that kind of variety in US accents? I can tell a Texan accent, or a Deep South/New Orleans accent, or a strong New York accent ("Soiled them? I only just boight them!"), but almost everyone else just sounds "generic American" to me.

Peter