I know what you mean, lisapower, but like you I edit television, so I think we might be more attuned to it.
I don't watch any UK dramas, but my wife does, and from what I've noticed the music is more "on the nose" than it is in American dramas. In other words, when the bad guy is caught in a UK crime drama, the music has a much more dramatic, revelatory feel to it, as though the audience might not notice that resolution has taken place without a big music cue to underline it.
(If you still have no idea what I mean, watch the scene at the end of A Few Good Men when Corporal Dawson says, "What did we do wrong? We did nothing wrong!" and Corporal Downey replies, "Yeah, we did. We were supposed to fight for the people who couldn't fight for themselves. We were supposed to fight for Willie."
As if the clunky dialogue didn't underline the point, there's a little clarinet line underneath it which is what I assume the composer thinks it sounds like in someone's head whenever someone has "seen the light" and realized the error of their ways.
I know A Few Good Men is an American film. I'm using it as an example of a too obvious music cue.)
The thing that drives me nuts about music on UK TV is how much of it sounds the same. If you put me an a dark room and played the theme music from "Countdown," "Loose Women," "Daybreak," and "Saturday Kitchen," I'm sure I couldn't tell one run of jaunty repetitive scales from another.