In the first two entries in this series, I talked about the American adaptations of The Office and House of Cards, and what has made them successful, while so many attempts at bringing shows across the Atlantic have utterly failed. These shows were able to find a unique and original voice while maintaining key elements of the originals. For each of these successes, however, there are numerous failures. Some of these collapse after failing to find an American audience, while others never even make it to air. What has caused a majority of these shows to flop? By looking at two recent examples, The Inbetweeners and The IT Crowd, you can learn some very important things about British and American television and culture, as well as some lessons that US television should take from their UK counterparts.
The Inbetweeners
The Inbetweeners, and the subsequent American remake are nothing, if not childish. For the original, this childishness works. The four leads, played by Simon Bird, Joe Thomas, Blake Harrison, and James Buckley, worked because of their utter lack of charm, grace, or tact. They constantly mocked and harassed each other, and would turn on each other at e
very possible moment in order to throw insults at someone showing the slightest weakness. Despite this vitriol between the main characters, you still wanted to keep watching. The show carefully balanced which character was at the end of the joke, and there was always a perverse justice to things. The show ran for three series between 2008 and 2010, totaling 18 episodes, as well as two feature length films, in 2011 and 2014.
For MTV’s adaptation, however, this childishness fell flat on its face. The show broke what should be considered the golden rule of adapting British shows and simply redid the original show in a new setting, with Americanized jokes. The main change they did make, however, was toning down how brutal the main characters were to each other. On occasions, they would say small things about how much they actually cared for the other characters. While this might seem like a way to make the characters more likeable, all it actually does is take away the humor when they are mean and awful to each other. The twisted justice is gone, and so is any reason to watch the show. Fortunately, MTV canceled the remake after one criminally unfunny 12 episode season.
The IT Crowd
In the last decade, there has been an explosion of cultural awareness surrounding “nerd” or “geek culture,” which has, in turn, led to a rise in media portrayals of characters within these cultures. In America, this has reached incredible heights recently, with The Big Bang Theory topping ratings charts. Before The Big Bang Theory, however, UK fans already had a show about nerds that was not only more accurate to nerd culture, but also far superior in its wit and comedic timing.
The IT Crowd’s main characters Roy and Moss, played by Chris O’Dowd and Richard Ayoade, are familiar within the standard nerd character tropes, and deal with issues such as social awkwardness that are pretty typical fare. However, unlike many similar American examples, The IT Crowd never attempts to work any Hollywood magic to “fix” its nerdy characters by bringing them within more standard social norms. It lets them exist without explanation or correction. When the characters do step out of their comfort zones, they do so while still retaining what makes them interesting and unique.
In 2007, NBC was ready to move forward with their own version of The IT Crowd, with The Soup host, and eventual Community star Joel McHale replacing O’Dowd, and Ayoade reprising his role. There was a full season ordered, and a pilot shot, but then NBC backed out of the order before any additional episodes were made. Fortunately, (or maybe unfortunately, depending on your perspective), the pilot of the American remake can be found online, which gives some perspective why the remake was canned so quickly, before audiences even had a chance to see it.
The episode is almost entirely a remake of the UK pilot, which, at times, actually still leads to funny moments. However, most of the jokes that killed in the original are awkward, and just plain bad. A huge factor in this is unfortunately McHale, who is entirely unbelievable as Roy. The reasons that McHale is so excellent as Jeff Winger on Community, his charm, attractiveness, and sarcastic wit, actually work against his portrayal of Roy. Roy is supposed to be a witty, but socially awkward disgruntled employee, but McHale comes off way too snarky to be believable as a corporate basement dweller, and instead feels much more like the snobbish executives on the show.
The failures of this pilot again show the primary issue of these attempted adaptations. They stuck with the content of the original instead of taking the core concept and creating a new show around it. The experience feels like hearing someone badly recite a joke they heard and absolutely butcher it. NBC is currently trying to bring The IT Crowd to America again. This time, however, the prospect seems substantially more promising. The first attempt was done by David Guarascio and Moses Port, the same writers who NBC later hired to replace Community’s creator, Dan Harmon, which ended up being a disastrous misstep that they went back on after one season. Graham Linehan, The IT Crowd’s creator, was not involved at all in the first US version, and didn’t even know about its existence until he read about it online.
This time around, however, the show seems to be in much better hands. Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs and Cougar Town, two long running and successful American comedies, is leading the production and Linehan is on board as an executive producer, and seems very confident about the project. Though fans of the original still have every right to be skeptical, the team behind this new attempt seems promising.
How American TV Needs to Learn From Past Failure
Looking at the vast amount of attempted US adaptations of UK TV shows, and the high percentage of which have failed, it is clear that American TV needs to change its strategy when it comes to these shows. The most unfortunate reality of American TV is that it is a money centered endeavor, and this has created a culture within television networks and their executives that searches for shows that will make them money, instead of creating unique and interesting content, then finding ways to sell their audience on it.
Ultimately, what American TV needs more than anything is to take a page from BBC, and push creativity and content to the forefront in its creative process. This change needs to start at a leadership level. TV, at its best, can serve as a community hub, where people go and can be connected to the world around them through various forms of entertainment and information-based programming.
In order for American TV to achieve this, studio executives would need to see themselves as community leaders, and therefore model leadership skills, such as those listed by Wake Forest University. This change would be drastic, and will most likely never fully happen. However, with the increased success and popularity of British TV through streaming services such as Netflix, and access to channels such as BBC America, fans of American TV can be hopeful that that some positive changes might be on the way.
Words by Zachary Evans