“40-year-old men pretending to be raptors hailing a cab,” as Greg Proops said he saw someone describe the show…
Touching Evil and Prime Suspect immediately come to mind. Both were short-lived and both were pale imitators.
Yes. Here’s a list from Wikipedia.
I agree with this.
I think the American Queer as Folk blew the British one out of the water.
4 words on why the American version of Whose line is better that the British version
Clive
Anderson
Tony
Slattery
I still believe Newhartwas an attempt to do Fawlty Towers, or at least something like it.
Cybil was the enjoyable American version of Absolutely Fabulous. Ab Fab was better.
I’m hoping that the British version of ‘Queer as Folk’ is really good. It has just become available on Netflix Instant Watch. I watched the American version and enjoyed it (except the scenes of lesbian sex). Anyway, I’ve just seen episode 1 and only series 1 and 2 are available right now.
I thought that the British version of Antiques Roadshow was based on the American version, but it wasn’t in the Wikipedia list.
Bob
That’s because it’s the other way around. The British version predates the American by 18 years. (And the Canadian by 26.)
Every single one I’ve ever seen. And most American versions of British shows seem to flounder. Except for The Office (Brit version was much better but I actually do like the American one too - love me some Steve Carell).
I thought they were pretty equal.
I watched the first season of the UK Skins and couldn’t watch any more. One of the guys reminded me of someone I know and it was just too much. I couldn’t imagine how the American version could be that intense, unless it was on Cinemax.
I can’t imagine how the American Shameless is anything near the first few seasons of the original (it has since spiraled in to a lot of mess). America does not have council flats. We have trailer parks and projects but it still doesn’t seem the same. I did watch the first US episode but I couldn’t follow it.
A couple of months ago, the pilot for a US version of The IT Crowd was circulating on video sharing sites. The US version starred Joel McHale and Richard Ayoade and was a shot-for-shot remake of the first episode of the UK original. MTV is going to start airing a remake of The Inbetweeners later this month.
Personally, I find it fascinating when a show like The Office is remade around the world, because it’s interesting to see what stays the same and what changes for local tastes.
The Office and Queer as Folk are the only shows were the reverse could possible be true, but in both cases it’s because the shows went on for so much longer and diverged so much from the source material that they may as well be completely different shows. Shows like All in the Family and Three’s Company would run into similiar problems.
There was a British miniseries in the '80s called The Life and Loves of a She Devil, based on the novel of the same name. I think it came on A&E in America (which was a much better channel then [and you paid for it with nickels that had pictures of bumblebees]). I loved it- it was one of the darkest things I’d ever seen. The main character is Ruth, a fat unattractive housewife with warts and limited personality whose husband leaves her for a lovely young wealthy writer, and the miniseries/novel was about her longterm (years in the making) revenge, and we’re not talking running them down in a parking lot or framing them for pot possession but something you’d have to watch or read the original to understand: again, very dark, sexual shenanigans, all consuming bitterness, violence, some well placed obituaries, some hints of black magick, surgery and blood… super dark but also very compelling plot.
When I heard it was going to be remade in America starring Roseanne Barr, who at the time hadn’t had all of the plastic surgery but was still pudgy with her original nose and all, I thought “I can see it, with some makeup to ugly her up a bit, even though she’s not 6’0 tall like Ruth it could work as an American miniseries”. Then I was surprised when I learned it was going to be a movie- there was no way you could squeeze a third of the plot into your standard movie- and then that it was a revenge comedy. The book/miniseries had some dark humor but it was far more thriller than comedy.
The result, which starred Ed Begley, Jr. as the husband and Meryl Streep as the writer, didn’t so much flopped as it did mediocre box office and was quickly forgotten. It had just enough of the original’s plot to give you a couple of spoilers, but it was a totally different story- basically the difference in a Disney cartoon and the darkest possible version of the Grimm story.
I loved the American version of Touching Evil. They remade several of the plots but the tone was sufficiently different that it felt totally different. I’m sure it’s how Jeffrey Donovan got the role on Burn Notice.
It was completely gutted, as I recall, and barely lasted a season:
This is what I came in here to mention. Chilling story about the lengths a woman will go to get her revenge, turned into an idiotic comedy that completely misses the point. And when-oh-when will it be available on Region 1 DVD (the chilling revenge, I mean, not the idiotic comedy)?
Agreed.
US version of Fawlty Towers: Payne. Nine horrible episodes compared to FT’s perfect twelve.
I saw this when it aired and while I like John Larroquette, this was a stinker.
Jersey Shore = Geordie Shore. 
Having been forced to watch several episodes of Jersey Shore against my explicitly expressed will, I might have to find episodes of Geordie Shore online, if only to see who plays the British Snookie.