I love the show KEEPING UP APPEARANCES and was talking to my friend who thought an American version would be successful. As much as I love the show, I don’t think we have the class system that would make an American version possible.
Just wondering what you all think?
Oops I got to get the phone dear “It’s probably somebody important.”
“It’s spelled B-U-C-K-E-T. No rest assured it is pronounced BOO-KAY.”
I’ve wondered myself whether an American version would work, and I can’t decide whether it would or not. It’s hard to pinpoint the American equivalent to Hyacinth.
For an American version, you might have to have her be a little bit younger, maybe a late 30 something. Have here live in one of those McMansions- big square footage homes on small lots with the impressive looking facades. Have her desperately trying to get her uninterested kids to act more like rich kids by joining the lacrosse team or dressage competitions. Have her trying to impress her Junior League or Charity Ball “friends” with her “theme” (everyone will be at my Cinco de Mayo party- I got a margarita machine) parties which no one wants to attend. Her husband can be an acctountant with the government. Her sister can live on the outskirts of town in a trailer park and drive a bitchin’ Camaro (when it gets fixed up of course).
Where would we possibly get an american actor who would be as good as Patricia Rutledge? Where? I thin k she makes the whole show.
An American version could be quite funny…either have her living in Boston a few miles from one of the Kennedy’s, or perhaps near Washington DC and having her be an equal opportunity political groupie with Richard a tired, low-level bureaucrat. Their son, Sheridan, would be studying fashion design in San Francisco.
Hyacinth could be played by Kathy Bates (she can do anything) and the neighbor lady has to be Laurie Metcalf. As for the role of Richard - Bob Newhart.
I don’t think it would work, becuase Hyacinth would be flaunting her lower-class roots, rather than trying to hide them. In fact, she would be doing her best to accentuate how trashy her family is. She might have borrowed money from her parents’ friends to start an oil company, and then talk as if she had been a roughneck. Incidentally, Michael Kinsley would agree.
A similar notion was kicked around a few years back when someone was considering an American version of Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which a family’s black sheep systematically murders his relatives in order to inherit a noble title. It doesn’t work if the MacGuffin is mere family wealth, since that doesn’t automatically pass to the next family member (as a title would). It would be kind of pointless for Will Smith to kill a multiple-role Robin Williams (yes, that was the casting they had in mind) if somewhere along the way one of the relatives decided to leave his/her estate to the SPCA.
Without the framework of a class system, the premise falls apart.
My mother is the American Hyacinth. Believe it.
This may be a generational thing. A lot of Baby Boomers like to sneer at the upper classes. However, in my experience, people who grew up in the Great Depression, and actually experienced poverty, like to put on a show of success and prosperity.
My mother, and most of my aunts, are dead ringers for Hyacinth.