Not in the program yet (and very likely won't be), but with the people I've been chatting with at University of York, this definitely seems to be the case. The professors I've been talking to indicated that I would be hopping directly into research towards an end goal instead of spending a bunch of time in coursework.

They also seemed to assume a lot more knowledge about CS and math than most US grad schools do. Presumably you're just expected to enter with most of the knowledge required to research your dissertation. For my application, I had to write a 5-6 page proposal on what I wanted to research, and had to more-or-less defend the proposal during the admissions interview.

I'm not as familiar with the American PhD process, but my dad said for him (about 38 years ago, PhD in Aerospace at Notre Dame) it was more or less akin to the undergrad admission process: he took the GRE, sent a few transcripts, interviewed a few people, was accepted, and after about a year he decided what he wanted to focus on.

Yes, that is very different from what I experienced at Berkeley as well. There were some notable differences between my PhD application and undergrad, in that PhD admissions committees weren't really interested in the undergraduate dog and pony show of "tell me how your volunteer work and experience playing the flute in your high school orchestra shaped you as a person..." My personal statement was about what I intended to get out of a PhD program and a vague direction of possible future research interest. Interestingly, med and law school applications in the US are much more similar to the undergrad essay than PhD programs.

But still, even the PhD statement was nothing like the 5-6 page proposal with a clear research focus that you described. Sounds more like the kind of program I'd be interested in if I were to go back, as I'd be mainly interested in researching something deeply, not taking classes.

Well, good luck, hope it works out for you.