# Why does American tv ruin British shows? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 31, 2004, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714 "2004-07-31T13:41:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/41 "2004-08-01T17:43:17Z")
> [@Smeghead](#): > > Actually, I have a 25 minute American pilot episode sitting on my hard drive, with a male cat. And what’s-her-face that played Daphne on Frasier as Holly. How is it? ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/42 "2004-08-01T18:09:53Z")
> [@Sam Lowry](#): > > Also, aren’t most or all British shows a full 30 minutes with no commercials? Only programmes made for the BBC. As the BBC don’t have adverts. ---
**Author:** ![Murcielago](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Murcielago](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Murcielago)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/43 "2004-08-01T18:22:07Z")
Along with creating time limitations, commercials dictate certain structural constraints on US sit-coms. There is a need to write with the advertising break in mind, loosely dividing a show into two acts. A slow build of tension which works so well in shows like _Fawlty Towers_ and _Blackadder_ would be interrupted by the quarter-hour break in a US version. An HBO program like _Curb Your Enthusiasm_ takes great advantage of their freedom from such restrictions. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2004, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/44 "2004-08-01T18:47:51Z")
I think this thread would benefit from mention of [this](http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/m/marriedwithchild_1299002005.shtml) sorry little episode. > [@](#): > > A British version of Married…With Children was attempted - called Married For Life, it starred Russ Abbot, who had a similarly long face to Ed O’Neill. But the UK model, shorn of most of its vulgarity, flopped. Oh the shame. People who live in glass houses, and all that… ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/45 "2004-08-02T05:44:01Z")
> [@Mr. Blue Sky](#): > > How is it? Oh, it’s horrible. Sorry, I sort of figured that was taken for granted. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/46 "2004-08-02T06:24:10Z")
> [@Misnomer](#): > > Location is no indication of nationality, but the part where I say “I’m an American” is. 😉 I only lived in England for a couple years, but it was long enough to pick up one or two habits – such as adding a ‘u’ to words like ‘humor’ in my casual writing. _{grin}_ > > Regarding Benny Hill: 1) I said ‘often,’ and even pointed out that I didn’t say ‘always;’ and 2) it depends on your definition of humor (there, happy now?). 😉 You also picked up the distinctly British habit of being _picayune_. 😉 I know you said ‘often’; I was just teasing. ---
**Author:** ![carebear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/97f17d/32.png) [@carebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carebear)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 7:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/47 "2004-08-02T07:48:58Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > Big Hint: The US media is in _love_ with “It’s just like X only with Y!” snippets. You got to have a movie plot that can be summarized in an elevator ride. TV premises have to be cut even shorter to keep with US short attention spans. So _never_ believe such media snippets. They’re always wrong and completely misleading. The industry term for that is “high-concept”. For example: “Picture this, it’s “Die Hard” but in a convent!” or “It’s “Triumph of the Will” but with midgets!” That sort of thing… and it directly, as was said, relates to marketability and the assumption that U.S. audiences won’t stretch to accept a “new” idea in movies. If you can’t present your script with a “high-concept” descriptor your chance of getting major studio backing is nil. Which is why we get multi-million doller piles of crap. And/or the same directors getting a free pass to make crap-fest after crapfest because lightning struck them once. Argh! ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/48 "2004-08-02T12:03:34Z")
I always thought the American pilot for Red Dwarf had the Singing/Dancing Demon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Cat, not Terry Farrell. And I’m pretty damn sure that while Colin Mochrie was in the Brit version of Whose Line, he’s actually Canadian (making 40% of the cast of the American version Canadian). As for the OP, Terry Pratchett has a good line about it, something along the lines of: I always meet people with loads of great ideas and no money who want to turn my novels into a movie- or they’re Americans. But I think one _huge_ problem with TV shows in the US is how they’re marketed and scheduled. I swear sometimes-- hell, make that often!-- shows are hyped beyond all belief (like Coupling), or they yo-yo around the week so that _nobody_ can find them. ---
**Author:** ![Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f0a364/32.png) [@Rube\_E.Tewesday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rube_E.Tewesday)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/49 "2004-08-02T12:11:18Z")
> [@Stormz](#): > > American tv execs see great English tv shows, so buy the rights to them to be shown in America… but instead of actually showing the shows, they decide to re-make them with an all American cast, change the scripts and practically everything that made the show funny or good in the first place (with the exception of “You Again” (1980`s show with John Stamos), which I can`t remember the English show`s name it was based on). > > Other than that I can`t think of one good English \> American tv show, but plenty of bad ones which lose all meaning. OK … wanted to make sure I understood you… you’re saying “You Again” was an example of getting it right? I remember that show. Not only was it the worst thing I’ve ever seen, it was probably the worst thing I could imagine. [Chandler Bing voice]And I’m not just talking television[/Chandler Bing voice]. ---
**Author:** ![Stormz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Stormz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormz)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/50 "2004-08-02T12:45:00Z")
> [@WotNot](#): > > Consider me mildly offended. I take comfort in the fact that you screwed up the grammar and can’t use proper apostrophes. 😉 _cough_ 🙂 you`re correct about the apostrophes (oops, plurals don`t require them), but you totally proved my point regarding American understanding of British regional accents as Geordies (people from around Newcastle), are well known for adding “like” to the end of every sentence. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Stormz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Stormz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormz)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/51 "2004-08-02T12:53:59Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > Since you didn’t say “I can’t name one _American_ film…” 😃 > > I saw a film about Australians in Vietnam that was made (I think) in the early-'80s. I don’t remember the title, or much about it; but there was a scene where the guys were going to embarrass the chaplain by presenting him with a masturbation device. The padre accepted the gift gratefully. “Oh, a wanker! And a very nice one. I’ve never seen such good workmanship.” > > As fofr WWI, there was Peter Weir’s _Gallipoli_. Yeah, I did mean non-Aussie films. A few Aussies have been seen in some older British films on WW2 (mainly North Africa and Asia), but not many, and I can`t think of one American film with an Aussie soldier mentioned.... even though we did alot better in Vietnam than they did. Oh, maybe that`s why 😃 Has anyone mentioned `Breaker Morant` yet? Aussie movie of our `hero` in the Boer war. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/52 "2004-08-02T12:58:56Z")
The reason is that American Tv producers (and, usually, movies producers) are incredibly conservative and cautious guys who are chiefly interested in making money, not in produicing good shows. If they can produce something that a lot of people will watch and that they can sell the syndication rights for, they’ve done their job. They want to avoid opvertaxing the minds of watchers, or of offending anyone, so they staty away from creative, strong, or intellifgent shows if they can. The problem is that this philosophy produces weak and inspid shows, and a lot of people actually do like things with intelligence, wit, opinions, and quality. So TV is in a weird balancing act that is forced to take occasional chances that can turn out good shows, and awful ones. **Twilight Zone** was great, for instance. So were a lot of other shows. Most shows are terrible. The good thing about shows based on British originals is that they’ve been tried and tested. Aha! You’ve bought a known quantity. All we have to do is remove the things that offend people and/or make them work too much. If we’re lucky, the emasculated version will still pack 'em in. If not, we’ve only lost X amount of money, instead of what we could have lost by starting from scratch. So they take a show like **Absolutely Fabulous** , remove everything that made it worth watching, and didn’t fret too much when it died. By the way: \*\* SmackFu, I think the 2nd “King Kong” was better than the first? \*\* They can cure these delusions now. ---
**Author:** ![Stormz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Stormz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormz)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/53 "2004-08-02T13:08:57Z")
Well, the drugs haven`t quite kicked in yet 🙂 In England, it`s illegal to have any more than 12 minutes of promotions/ads within any hour of airtime, and it`s also illegal to have the ad breaks too close together… which thankfully spares us from the American curse of “Coming up next…”, and after being brainwashed for a few minutes you see the credits of the show, then another ad-break. Should be illegal in the USA as well. Unfortunately, as time goes on Australia is becoming more and more Americanised, especially in it`s tv laws. I thought “You Again” was a half-decent port of an English show, but I was a kid and I saw it in Australia before I came to England and saw the real deal. I`m glad that so many Americans here agree about the terrible state of their British tv molestations (I can`t comment on tv in general there as I don`t live there)..... but is there anything you can do about it? Can some rich person start up a World tv cable company in the USA, screening the original series`? Can you all get BBC USA? Can you all write to the press and the tv execs demanding they stop the fiddling and show the original that they bought the rights to anyway and stop treating the viewing public as morons or being scared of the over-religious? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/54 "2004-08-02T13:51:34Z")
Well, a lot of the BBC shows show up on US Public Television, and we get BBC USA now, so we can see a lot of the originals. Sometimes they show up elsewhere, as on Comedy Central. To tell the truth, something occasionally slips through the US commercial television mediocrity filter and shows up on regular TV. I first saw Monty Python’s Flying Circus on an NBC TV summer replacement show for Dean Martin. It was pretty cut up, but it was there. They ran The Prisoner as a summer replacement, too – two years in a row! I’d wager that not all American versions are awful. **All in the Family** was gutsy and took on contemporary issues, and lasted one long time. But I never saw the British original to compare it with. And I have to admit that, much as I usually like the originals, neither Pepper Mill nor I can stand **The Office**. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/55 "2004-08-02T17:33:01Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > I always thought the American pilot for Red Dwarf had the Singing/Dancing Demon from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Cat, not Terry Farrell. Yeah, that’s the version I have. I was poking around the BBC website last night for a completely unrelated reason, and happened across a page that said there were two separate attempts to do an American Red Dwarf pilot, which explains a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Mehitabel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@Mehitabel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mehitabel)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/56 "2004-08-02T17:44:10Z")
FTR, Cablevision does not offer BBC America on either its premium or digital modes, at least in the Bronx. Unless I move, I can’t get it at all–my building does not allow us to have satellite dishes either. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/57 "2004-08-02T17:54:44Z")
> [@](#): > > I`m glad that so many Americans here agree about the terrible state of their British tv molestations After reading this am I the only one who was thinking why do moles have there own TV stations in Austrailia? Must be a figure of speech :smack: . In my defence, my brain was conditioned into thinking about TV stations from the previous posts… ---
**Author:** ![Stormz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Stormz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stormz)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/58 "2004-08-02T18:37:23Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > After reading this am I the only one who was thinking why do moles have there own TV stations in Austrailia? Must be a figure of speech :smack: . > > In my defence, my brain was conditioned into thinking about TV stations from the previous posts… eh??? molestations as in `molested`… to molest, ravage. Although Aussie tv is a bit underground. sorry :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2004, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/59 "2004-08-02T20:46:26Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > After reading this am I the only one who was thinking why do moles have there own TV stations in Austrailia? Must be a figure of speech :smack: . You must get _really_ confused when people talk about _molasses_, then. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714/60 "2004-08-03T04:40:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Isn’t Coupling based on Friends? Last Fall the TVGuide insisted that the US version of Coupling was the remake of the British remake of Friends, anyway. > [@](#): > > That’s like saying that Romeo and Juliet is based on Dick and Jane. There’s just so much wrong with that statement… Yes, because the two shows were nothing alike. Granted they were both sit-coms about a group of three men and three women, all single and in the mid-twenties, living is a big city. And admittedly both had a ditzy woman, a dim-witted ladie’s man, a gorgeous girl, a joking sidekick, a neurotic girl, and a geeky guy. And both shows were basically thirty minutes of sexual innuendo. But they were completely different because on _Friends_ the ditzy girl was a blonde and on _Coupling_ - a wholey original show made by people who never saw a single episode of _Friends_ in fact they never even heard of any such series - the ditzy girl was a brunette. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-american-tv-ruin-british-shows/257714.md?page=4)