Well, that just makes you a wrong 'un.
Totally wrong. The networks have continued to run programs that were produced in Canada (Monk, just for an example of a show mentioned upthread – watch for the the Toronto Star building in the backgrounds.)
As for the British espionage shows of the 1960’s, what ended their run was the totally incomprehsible finale of The Prisoner (Cecil even felt it necessary to devote a column to it) and the replacement of Dianna Rigg with Linda Thorsen on the The Avengers, which led to a substantial drop in popularity of the show in the U.S.
The overall issue is that British TV is just different from American TV. Little things, like camera placement and lighting, and huge things, like dialog and cultural references.
Hey, I made an honest effort. I’m just not one for comedies where the driving force is a character’s inability to stop for ten seconds, take a deep breath, and realize the vast majority of his problems are self-inflicted.
The weirdest one I can recall was the British remake of Who’s the Boss? The American version had already been running fairly successfully on British TV for some time, and its appeal depended almost entirely on Tony Danza’s charm (well, some people must have liked him). I cannot imagine why anyone thought that a remake with British actors, one that made no attempt to disguise that it was a copy of the American original, would work.
This may be controversial, but I have long felt that Three’s Company was actually better than the British original, Man About the House. Man About the House was a very conventional sitcom that relied largely on sexual innuendo, in the context of what was, even at the time, a very dated and conventional view of relations between the sexes. Three’s Company transcended this by making the humor even broader and abandoning all pretense of realism, essentially turning the show from sitcom to farce (and John Ritter was a very talented farceur).
Another oddity about this pair of shows is that (IMHO) the girls in the British version were considerably hotter than those in the original cast of the American version. That almost never happens! (I guess we were supposed to think Suzanne Sommers was hot, but she never did much for me. Her replacements were much more conventionally Hollywood glamorous, but not very funny.)
It would appear that “Scouser” just didn’t translate well, and the US re-developers decided that “beach bum” was a substitute. Interestingly the Rimmer character translated rather better (IMO) which suggests that tin-pot dictators exist both sides of the Atlantic. 
As for the 2nd remake… what were they thinking making the Cat female?! :smack:
And whoever played the American version of Kryten nailed it!
Is the UK version of Free Agents considered good in their country? The US version flopped and got pulled after about a month. Judging from the commercials running on BBCA for the UK version, both had Buffy’s Anthony Stewart Head in the cast, but he was pretty much wasted in the one US episode I saw.
Same guy as the UK - Robert Llewellyn
I’m guessing that’s going to count as a whoosh.
kunilou writes:
> The networks have continued to run programs that were produced in Canada
> (Monk, just for an example of a show mentioned upthread – watch for the the
> Toronto Star building in the backgrounds.)
No, it’s produced in the U.S. It’s filmed (mostly) in Canada, but it’s owned by American production companies:
The only thing that American TV and movie production companies care about is that they themselves make money. They don’t remotely care about American cities. They are happy to film in foreign cities when it’s cheaper to film there. The TV shows (and most of the movies) are set in the U.S. though, even when it’s obvious from the background shots that it’s filmed outside the U.S. They also don’t remotely care about American actors. They are happy to hire foreign actors to play roles in those TV shows and movies as long as those foreign actors are able to do a reasonable American accent. Like all big American companies, they only care about their own profits. They are happy to ship jobs outside the U.S. as long as the profits return to them. They make the settings and characters of the shows American so they can pretend to their audiences that they are doing American shows, even if they film them abroad and use foreign actors. They only care that the profits of the shows return to those big American companies.
Indeed, under the terms of Space Directive 1405, paragraph C.
Space Directive 1405, paragraph C Sir? - No Doper is permited to ware a pink carnation on deck?
…That’s the great thing about British TV, they give you closure.
True there - i’m still waiting for an ending for Soap - did the Taits and the Cambells get together? Did Chester ever tell Jesica about his bits on the side? Did Burt and Danny ever reconcile?.. Tune in next week fo the next exciting episode of Soap…
Oh I must give it a go again, I was getting terrible déjà vu.
This is the main difference for me.
A lot of the US series seem to go on and on and on and on and on. It really isn’t possible to sustain a meaningful story arc through many lengthy series.
Even something like “the Sopranos” which I enjoyed very much, would’ve benefited from being half the length. I’m watching “Boardwalk Empire” and that too is excellent but already I’m thinking that I’d like it to complete the story and finish at the end of this series. It is enough. Otherwise it ceases to be storytelling and becomes soap-opera that you can dip in and out of and that is far less satisfying to me.
I always hold up The UK version of “the Office” and “Extras” as masterclasses of succinct storytelling. We have enough time to learn and care about the characters without ever getting sick of the same old thing again and again. They start, they go on a journey, there is an end. The brevity adds to the emotional punch.
In the UK we probably make a virtue out of a necessity. We typically have a series being the responsibility of one or two writers and that limits their output but it also gives a very specific feel to a show.
In the US I’m sure these would’ve been spun out for hundreds of episodes with teams of writers but I can’t see that either of them would’ve been improved by that. I’d imagine that over time it would become diluted. I haven’t seen the US Office so maybe that has already happened.
Don’t tell the Doctor.
Partly that’s because they write and produce the series, and then show it; as opposed to the US where they’ll still be writing and filming later episodes even as earlier episodes are being broadcast. Presumably due to the longer series thing which makes that necessary.
So, we’re pretty much in agreement that American producers will take any idea from anyone, anywhere and do anything they can with it to make money from it (and is this really any different in any other country?). But you’re claiming that they don’t do the cheapest, easiest, fastest thing they can – buy an already produced foreign show and resell it. This is a business trick that has worked quite well for American manufacturers, and you’d think the entertainment industry would have figured it out by now.
For that matter, why don’t the networks directly co-produce international productions? There may be some American producers who would boycott a network who did that, but it’s not like the producers have unlimited markets for their products.
I stand by my argument, that American productions are different from those of other English-speaking countries, that American audiences expect “American” shows and that the industry responds by Americanizing the product.
That would be the cheapest, easiest thing. But they wouldn’t have enough content to fill a full US season.
They do - Rome, Game of Thrones, Torchwood: Miracle Day, and so on were all co-produced international productions.