BTW I was pretty disappointed in the prog. The celebrity rant was good, as was the sense of horror Ricky Gervais portrayed at realising what he’d let himself in for… but the rest, meh. I’ve never found the character arcs very convincing, and this was no exception.
FTR, I used to know, and indeed had a massive crush on, the actress who played the receptionist at the Ivy.
Why does everything need to be a localisation, or whatever you want to call it?
The show had American celebs, and plenty of British celebs who were definitely not “Americanised”.
I’ve never seen anything to indicate that any joke on Extras was played two different ways for British and American audiences.
The Sanjaya joke was a joke about how dumb the memorabilia guy was for mis-reading fads.
They probably thought more Brits would get a Sanjaya joke than Americans would get a Paul Potts joke. It was – at least jointly – an HBO production, was it not?
It doesn’t. I think you’re missing the point, which is that, in the UK, the shopkeeper didn’t say “Sanjaya”, he said “Same Difference”.
So if someone who watched the US version heard “Sanjaya” (who, on examination, appears to be a lame runner-up from American Idol), it suggests that the line was altered for the US market.
Yes, watching it again they do cut away at the moment the guy says “Same Difference” (he definitely does say that in the British version, it’s even in the subtitles), which he says clearly enough for it to seem unlikely that anyone would mishear it as “Sanjaya”. Virtually nobody here has heard of Sanjaya. They must have recorded two versions, as SmackFu also suggests.
As I mentioned upthread, Extras has small differences in the UK and US version. Here’s one from a thread almost a year ago that Mouse_Maven started about differences between syndicated shows in other countries:
I was filmed way before Same Difference became a name that people in the UK would know. They knew that x-factor would be on and just dubbed in a name. The seem to have put a US equivalent on for the US showing. Sanjaya=Same Difference on every level that matters.
It’s a bit silly though as a lot of the incidental humour comes from the UK B list celebs. Hal and Pace/Lionel Blair etc. are all very recognisable in the UK and not at all known to Americans. Making a small change like changing SD to Sanjaya is almost redundant. I suppose it’s the only kind of change that’s really open to them unless the change the very nature of the show.
Sometimes Maggie’s stupidity drags me out of the show. She goes from being a funny smart…ish person to being a complete moron too easily IMO.
What would a same difference doll be anyhow?
Those two are the scariest things I’ve seen since Donny and Marie… Every time I saw them on X-Factor, they looked like they’d been doing “E” - the smiles never wilted, no matter what was happening…
Brother and sister who gave off a creepy “we’re sleeping with each other” vibe… ughh
Their target audience seemed to be 10 year olds - singing songs from High School Musical, lighting Christmas trees while “flying” through the air on wires, pillow fights… If it was syrupy-sweet, it was in their act…
I need to go have a drink now, just to get them out of my mind!
On a somewhat unrelated note, I forgot to ask this when I originally watched this thing (because I was so pissed off by the suckitude) but what was the deal with the Big Brother announcer’s accent? He seemed to randomly transpose vowels and stretch them out for no good reason. “Now the hoisemiiiiites discoos fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime.”
I know you yobs have a different accent for every street corner but WTF is his deal?
I think that’s the regular announcer for Big Brother and Celebrity Big Brother… Isn’t it a Geordie accent from around Newcastle?
Yep, it sounded like the real Marcus Bentley, whose Geordie accented voiceover is familiar to Big Brother viewers.