NEW YORK – You may have seen the original BBC version of “The Office,” but have you seen the sketch show “A Bit of Fry & Laurie” with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry?

What about Steve Coogan’s talk-show parody, “Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge”? Or how about the 2003 political thriller “State of Play”?

Catching these British shows in the U.S. used to mean hunting down sometimes hard to find DVDs. But in digital realms, divisions between American and British TV worlds are fast dissolving.

Netflix and Hulu have made international television more accessible than ever. Now, one’s favorite “new” show is often phrased as a “discovery.” And often, viewers’ interests lead beyond borders.

Broadcast television, of course, offers many cable stations from abroad. But in the vast digital repositories of Hulu and Netflix, shows aren’t segregated by country of origin. Instead, programs are discovered and rediscovered through word of mouth and recommendations from friends, often through social media or those sites’ own recommendation engines.

Hulu, which is owned by the parent companies of ABC, NBC and Fox, is attempting to make a splash this summer by streaming three British series not before seen in the U.S.

“Misfits,” a Channel 4 comedy about community service-sentenced teenagers turned into superheroes by an electrical storm, premiered on Hulu last week. The Vuguru-produced Web series “The Booth at the End,” a moralistic thriller about a man who grants wishes for a price, will premiere Monday. “Whites,” a BBC comedy about a country house hotel chef, debuts July 20.

Hulu earlier noticed a surprisingly strong response to British shows such as the cult comedy “Spaced” by Simon Pegg, which ran from 1999 to 2001. Also popular on Hulu were the 2004-2006 hospital sitcom “Green Wing” and the 2003-2010 sitcom “Peep Show.”

Similar findings also led Netflix to look abroad.

“House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Ian Richardson as a plotting Parliament politician, was a sensation for the BBC when it ran in 1990, with subsequent parts in 1993 and 1995.

In a first for the service, Netflix is paying producer Media Rights Capital for the exclusive rights to distribute an American remake of the series. The new “House of Cards,” to star Kevin Spacey and have director David Fincher as executive producer, will stream exclusively on Netflix beginning next year.

Netflix hasn’t disclosed how much it is paying for the rights, but it’s backing “House of Cards” for not just one season, but 26 hour-long episodes.

Netflix has been pushing its streaming option, as opposed to, or in addition to, its mail-order rental DVD subscription. It now has more than 20,000 titles in its streaming library.

“We did license ‘House of Cards’ because of this very premise,” said Steve Swasey, Netflix spokesman. “The British production of ‘House of Cards’ performed very well on DVD. We knew that a lot of Netflix members watched and rated it highly.”