http://www.fox.com/gracepoint/
But why? The original was so good, I don’t see what they can add to it - except for a lot of advertising dollars.
I don’t get it either (the whole remake-in-another-country thing). Sometimes it’s successful or popular (The Office, frexample), but I still don’t get it, or really like it.
Totally don’t get it, and it was filmed in my city! (Victoria, BC)
I thought the original Broadchurch was excellent. I’d only look at this to gawk at landmarks or see if I show up in the background. 
People have been adapting stories to their own cultures for centuries. As long as it’s well done, I have no problem with it.
I don’t know how much adapting is being done. The ads I’ve seen for it so far are pretty much word-for-word and shot-for-shot copies of Broadchurch, exempt Tennant doesn’t have his Scottish accent. We’re giving it a pass.
I think there are a few reasons:
[ul]
[li]There’s who makes money from it. I’m not quite sure how it all works, because according to IMDB it’s not Fox that’s making the new show, it’s some production company Shine America and Fox is the distributor. But I’m guessing Fox thinks there’s more money in having a new show than rebroadcasting an existing one.[/li][li]The length of episodes: for the first few episodes of Broadchurch, the episode lengths are between 46-48 minutes long. Standard American TV shows are much closer to 42 minutes. They’d have to edit some things out, which could make things choppy or upset people. A cable channel could have the show run a little long and end at 9:07 instead of 9:00 to accommodate the length and commercials, but broadcast networks rarely do that. [/li][li]The accents of course. I watched Broadchurch and I don’t remember the accents being terribly difficult to understand, but a lot of Americans aren’t really accustomed to accents from Great Britain.[/li][li]The premise has been shown to be successful, getting great rating in the UK and elsewhere. And while some people in the US watched the original on BBC America, not everyone has BBC America, or maybe some didn’t get around to it. I would think the word of mouth from the original would help the remake, unless the remake is absolutely terrible in contrast. [/li][/ul]
I don’t know if I’ll watch it or not. I enjoyed the original, if the new one is pretty much the same I see no huge need to watch it, but I’ll see what reviews say.
Given I already know how it ends, I’m not sure why I’d want to watch it.
Many people who watch Fox can’t or don’t watch BBC America. So make an American version, air it on Fox, lots of people watch it, and everyone is happy.
Yeah, I’ve wondered about this. Will they change who did it to preserve the mystery for those of us who saw the first one?
Me too!
I think the American market is more suited to remakes. The US market is still a massive cash cow for any successful tv venture. It is a market of 300 million plus potential viewers along with vast advertising revenue. This means more money can be thrown at any “remake” productions. British television remaking a US series has only a market audience of 60 million or so. The risk is less enticing for a British production company wishing to remake a US show.
On the positive side it annoys my fellow Brits. Far too many of whom are tv snobs when it comes to such US remakes.
Wow, timely thread (for me! :)) - I just finished watching Broadchurch on DVD last night.
Count me in with the naysayers. The UK version is perfect. No casting, location, script, or direction change could improve on the original.
They’ve said the killer will be someone different. So it diverges from the original story at some point. I just hope it’s not one of the ‘obvious’ suspects.
Not to spoil anything for anyone, but one of the elements that made Broadchurch powerful was the identity of the killer.
I don’t get it either, except that they can probably make a boatload off ad sales, since the original did so well.
That said, I won’t be watching it for a number of reasons, including the utter crap that Life on Mars was reimagined as in the US version. Once bitten…
Also, David T’s American accent is weird.
I agree. I’m glad David Tenant will appear on US television, but I don’t get the point of changing the story.
The resolution was essential and lead to the most powerful scenes.
Plus they save a fortune on screenwriters. And even if you found the US adaption of Life on Mars, surely you thoroughly enjoyed NBC’s adaption of Coupling?
Life on Mars - yes I did enjoy that one, until the somewhat forced ending that was caused by ABC cancelling the show. As for Coupling - no, sorry, no thank you. I don’t think I even finished watching the first episode.
And I agree that changing who the killer is, unless there is a major rewrite of the characters, lessens the impact of the ending to the point it might as well be an episode of *CSI * or Castle.
(too late to edit my above post)
I always found it strange that they did an adaptation of a British show that was an adaptation of an American show (Coupling was basically a British adaptation of Friends, or at least late Friends). FWIW, I enjoyed the US Life on Mars - good story, great cast.
Also this. I don’t have cable (anymore). I can’t stream Broadchurch from Netflix, Hulu+, or Amazon Prime for free. So I’ll Tivo Gracepoint and, likely, enjoy it.
This is the one reason why I’m actually excited for Gracepoint. The resolution to the UK version left me pretty meh. It made sense, but only if you didn’t think about for more than a few minutes.