I honestly don't have enough experience of most other traditions to have a favourite. I've had some positive and some not so positive experiences of a variety of different traditions, but how much those are representative experiences of that tradition, I'd be hard pressed to say. (For example, the one Greek Orthodox service I've ever been to was a wedding; I don't feel that qualifies me to generalise about Greek Orthodox liturgies).
I will say that I have a preference for worship being conducted in a language which the congregation understands and can join in. I dislike having to guess where they're up to up the front because I can't understand a word they're saying (or singing), and don't feel that enables the worship of the congregation well.
For this reason, I really like the Eastern Orthodox approach of using the traditional language (which may or may not be vernacular, or widely understood, in the “old country”) together with the vernacular of the new country, sometimes even repeating very important parts (although the Orthodox believe that either the Epiclesis or the entire liturgy is consecratory, and not the Words of Institution, there is a video on YouTube of Metropolitan Philip Saliba intoning them twice, in English and Arabic).
But two of the four Oriental Orthodox churches do something even better: LCD screens in Coptic and Syriac Orthodox Churches have the liturgy, in the US for example, in English, Arabic, Coptic and Syriac, and the Coptic and Syriac is syllabized so you don’t have to know how to read Coptic or Syriac script. And to make sure that the guidance is accurate, the text is kept in PowerPoint presentations, and there will be a Psalti (a reader) in the altar on a laptop or tablet whose sole job is to make sure the displays reflect what is going on. This is combined with the extensive use of Arabic and English in the service, and the net affect is that following along is extremely easy. Also, Syriac and Coptic language education has been prioritized among the youth in an effort to save the former (the Assyrians are also doing this), and to revive the latter, so that it is more than just a liturgical language like Latin. There is enormous resentment in the Coptic community that they were forced to stop speaking Coptic in public in the tenth century, under penalty of having their tongue cut out.
It's interesting to me that you dislike Common Worship; it's not authorised for general use here but on occasion I've been able to use extracts from it for particular purposes, and I've been impressed with the breadth and quality of resources offered.
So herein I made an error due to insomnia; I meant to say the 1984 Church of Wales BCP, which although in a traditional language, is kind of a monster. Its impossible to find anything in it, and it bloated out to two volumes, which strikes me as absurd and contrary to the whole point of the Book of Common Prayer, which is to put everything needed in one volume.
I actually
like Common Worship, although the prose styling on the contemporary language services in some places strikes me as being not quite as good as that from the old Alternative Service Book or the 1979 American BCP. But Common Worship to me represents the future, in that it is the basis for a fully modularized liturgy, whereas the 2019 ACNA BCP represents the past, in that it has less actual content than the 1979 BCP, was not offered in a standard edition, and was based on the dated concept of how much could be crammed into one volume. And the 1984 BCP represents the worst of all worlds; it nominally retains a Cranmerian style, but wherever it deviates from the classic Book of Common Prayer, the prose gets very ugly, and it is extremely bloated into two volumes, with the division between them not being entirely clear. They would have done much better to, for example, call one volume a Missal or Euchologion, and one a Breviary or Divine Office Book, or perhaps split it into three volumes, because even split in two, the volumes of the 1984 Welsh Book could be called gargantuan.
So if Common Worship is the future, the 1984 BCP the road best not taken, the 2019 ACNA BCP a relic of dubious utility, inferior to the 2004 Irish BCP and the New Zealand BCP, both of which have superior prose styling, the 1979 BCP I think represents the apex of BCP development. It offers remarkable flexibility, it crams a massive amount of content into one volume without being unworkable, the typography is elegant, and the entire work is in the public domain, which allowed for the creation of the exquisite Anglican Service Book, which was expressly allowed by rubrics in the 1979 BCP allowing for any Episcopal church to use services adapted from the book into traditional language. This enabled all of the Rite II services to be rendered into Cranmerian prose, and in so doing, some of the common complaints about the Rite II services were addressed (for example, Eucharistic Prayer C is nicknamed the Star Trek prayer, and while I like it, a lot of Episcopal priests do not; a friend of mine who since retired from ECUSA used prayers A, B and C, but never D, because D has a fixed preface which he felt made it unworkable; he was also unaware of some of the rubrics that would have allowed him to tweak that).
Lastly, the 1979 BCP has something nicknamed “Rite III”, a loose order for a Communion service that Episcopal churches have used in many fun and creative ways, for example, several parishes have used the provisions in Rite III to celebrate the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
My hope is that the C of E will release Common Worship into the public domain and provide rubrics offering similiar flexibility. But as it stands, Common Worship is an amazing resource.
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That said, I was not half asleep when I knocked the 2006 ELCA service book. I find it hugely disappointing. I really like the Lutheran Book of Worship; I don’t see they needed to replace it, and the replacement is just not good. This has nothing to do with liberal theology; my UCC Book of Worship, which is from 1989-91, I think, and the 2009 Presbyterian hymnal Glory to God are both the products of extremely liberal churches, and they both feature well planned liturgical services. Some of the hymn selections in Glory to God I found questionable, but the liturgical aspect was fine.
Likewise, the 1993 Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod hymnal is miserable. However, they have a new hymnal shipping later this year which looks very nice.
Coincidentally, if there is ever a need for supplemental prayers compatible with the Cranmerian traditional language prayer books, the best source of these is the 1964 Methodist Episcopal Book of Worship. In addition to excellent content for the various holy days and liturgical seasons, it features the largest collection of useful prayers I have seen outside of an Eastern Orthodox Euchologion or Trebnik (also known as The Book of Needs). For example, if one needed to dedicate a hospital or university, or a nuclear power plant, or bless a rocket launch or item of personal medical equipment, it has prayers for that. Most of which are very practical; I cited the prayer for nuclear energy as an example of how comprehensive it is.
