Danny John-Jules.
Granted I don’t have a TV and therefore haven’t seen it, but isn’t ‘The West Wing’ derived from ‘Yes, Prime Minister’?
I don’t think so. I think West Wing was/is just another in the long stream of “realistic” shows about interesting proffessions.
Judging as a fan of both, nope. Nor have I ever seen such a connection ever suggested before.
As was mentioned in a post early in the thread, it would seem that TV execs don’t have much regard for the level of sophistication of the audience. We have to be hit over the head before we get it seems to be the idea.
I would bet that after Audie Murphy described the events that earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor and left the room, an exec leaned over to the writers and said, “You can punch that up a little, can’t your?”
Since this is about television, I’ll move this thread to our arts forum, Cafe Society.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
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.
Yeah, you don’t get much more subtle than Benny Hill chasing a woman in her underwear around a tree. 
Besides, you Brits can’t even spell humor. 
(Oops, shouldn’t have said “you” Brits, judging from Misnomer’s location.)
Ironically, I could definitely live with the replacement Dax as the the replacement Cat.
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.
Consider me mildly offended. I take comfort in the fact that you screwed up the grammar and can’t use proper apostrophes.
That first one I mentioned was The Odd Angry Shot (1979).
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?).
‘The Odd Angry Shot’
Also, aren’t most or all British shows a full 30 minutes with no commercials? Correct me if I’m wrong, but if they are a full 30 minutes, then most US channels couldn’t show British shows without chopping a quarter of the show off and then ruining it that way, or without changing their schedule around to allow for shows to run 40 minutes.
I’ve always liked the British version of Whose Line Is It Anyway better than the American.
Although the American version is nothing to sneeze at; Whose Line is just a darn good show.
That’s like saying that Romeo and Juliet is based on Dick and Jane. There’s just so much wrong with that statement…
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.
E.g., the post-mortems for the US Coupling blamed the scripts. The US scripts were of course lifted almost entirely intact from the UK version. So the bad acting, directing, producing, etc. weren’t mentioned at all for some Miraculous Reason.
This is a good example, Abbie.
I loved the original Brit Whose Line… and when they said they were doing an American version, I looked forward to it. But then it turned out to be a show called (IIRC) Kwik Wits and it was torturously bad…just ruined the whole concept, though you could see the basic underpinings they’d tried to copy. Then Drew Carey came out with the American Whose Line and was smart enough to use some British talent and follow the format slavishly…and it’s great. The other show tried to “Americanize” it too much and didn’t really trust the audience to understand a less telegraphed style of humor.
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.