Remakes and reimaginings...

[DanaC]

There is a bit of a trend for remaking tv shows on both sides of the Atlantic, though there appear to be more Brit shows remade for US audiences than the other way around.

We've discussed this before (several years ago iirc) and considered the various reasons why US channels in particular seem to prefer to remake rather than show the original British programmes. One possible reason being that for the average US viewer, Brit tv is very niche and inaccessible; whereas, for the average UK viewer, American tv (accents, setings, cultural idiosyncracies) are and have been staple viewing for so long that they no longer seem niche. The sheer scale of production in the US so dwarfs the output of our little island, that this is bound to be the case.

Alongside that, US viewers are accustomed to much higher production values in their tv shows. And much longer runs of those shows. In so many ways, Brit tv is different. It feels different, it looks different, it sounds different, and it takes up a different quota of time.

Sometimes the remakes are better. Or a slicker and better produced version of the original. Sometimes they sit alongside each other in quality, differentiated by cultural specificity and visual style, but equally good (The Office, and arguably Being Human). Sometimes the remake is a poor shade of the original (Life on Mars). Sometimes I can understand why a remake was needed (again, The Office), because the show depends on the ordinariness and instant recognisability of the situation and people. Sometimes, the remake seems utterly unnecessary and I do not understand why anybody felt the need to do so (Skins).

One show that I am intrigued to see, though really don't get why a remake was necessary, is Broadchurch. A brilliant tv noir detective drama, set in a small coastal town. Brilliantly written, directed and acted, I find it hard to imagine it being particularly inaccessible to US viewers.

But what prompted this thread was the news that HBO are considering a remake of Utopia. A show that is its visual and ideosyncratic style. Much of what made the show was the comic book visual, the amazing soundtrack ( a character in its own right, throughout) and the stylized dialogue. The mix of ordinariness, other worldliness, extreme violence, and sly humour.

Had it been any other tv makers I'd be entirely skeptical: but HBO has such a good record. They must have seen something in the programme that could be reworked for a home audience. I just hope that if it goes ahead, some of those viewers will give the original a chance as well.

Alas there are very few vids on the toob that aren't via Ch4 and most likely unavailable outside the UK. What there is tends to concentrate on the sound of Utopia, rather than the visuals. What doesn't really come across in most of them is how like a graphic novel it looks a lot of the time. The outdoors scenes in particular are beautiful and eery. The use of colour, themed throughout is wonderful.










Worth keeping an eye out for remakes. Sometimes they're exciting. Sometimes they're stupendously bad. But it's always interesting to see how ideas from one side of the atlantic are translated to the other.

[Sundae]

I've been thinking about this recently.
Some things I don't think need translating. They should stand alone like works of art, even if as television they are fundamentally ephemeral, and sometimes even reasonably trivial. I'd put The League of Gentlemen in there for example, because it has such a strong sense of place and character. Ditto Open All Hours.

But I could see Inside Number Nine being remade in order to fulfil the sense of visual shorthand.

Part of me wonders why anyone would want to remake Utopia. I think it should stand on its own merits. And if it's very British then that is part of the programme. But then I think, well... Why not let the Merkins have their own Utopia. So many elements in it would look and feel different in an American setting. A pub as a meeting place. Getting drunk in the afternoon, a paranoid survival expert with his own bunker, holing up in a decaying mansion. They all send different signals. Maybe not to the people in the Cellar, who have a more global mindset, but to your average American.

Because what I have found, working in retail again, is that your average Brit knows very very little about America and Americans even despite holidays in Florida and entertainment dominated by American films. So it stands to reason it must work in reverse, if not more so.

And after all, good stories can stand retelling.
I'd watch an American version of Les Revenants, despite it being quintessentially French in my mind. I adored its Gallic charm, but I honestly wouldn't mind seeing the same story set elsewhere. As long as it wasn't dumbed down and over-explained.

I think I think that I am more accepting of remaking and reimagining for TV because I care about it less. I'm a little more irritated by films, because if I have seen a good example I can't remember it. And because I think Hollywood is stuck it's own arse.

And don't ask me to be reasonable about films made from books. I know I am far too precious and definitely unreasonable

[DanaC]

See, now, I'm the other way around. Remaking movies, doesn't bother me. But TV is my world *smiles*.

I think it bothers me more when tv shows are remade whilst the original is still running. I am totally on board with bringing old shows into the modern era with remakes and reimaginings. Battlestar Galactica was a superb example of this. The Tomorrow People, I'm not so keen on, but I can see why the makers thought it would work as a modern retelling.

Simlarly with movie remakes - they are usually about bringing an old movie back with a modern twist. That to me, makes perfect sense. The new generation retells an old story in their own way.

But Being Human, whilst I love the remake, annoyed me in some ways. It seemed unnecessary. Likewise, Broadchurch. The second series is being made now in the UK and the remake of series 1 is about to go live in the US. Again, I don't see the point of remaking that. It would be like us remaking Dexter - why would we? When the original is so awesome? Does it matter that Miami is an exotic location for us? No, of course it doesn't. Does it matter that the shorthand and visual cues may get lost? No, of course it doesn't. The show makes perfect sense to us as is, because it is basically about the human experience.

Law and Order, on the other hand, is so grounded in the American legal and judicial system, that a remake made perfect sense (though I didn't like it).

I am looking forward to the remake of Utopia if it goes ahead. Because I think HBO will do something marvellous. But I don't think a remake is needed. Like Being Human, it is quintessentially British and that is part of its charm. The only way to remake it would be to do it very differently. In which case it might well be a very different show and stand in its own right.

Again, I just hope that some people will give the original a chance to stand on its own right.

[Clodfobble]

So how do you feel about the Sherlock series, which is BBC-produced but arguably very American in its style? Do you feel that it's a mild contamination of true British TV production, a mostly-American show that happens to use British actors, or somewhere in between? Are we headed for more of these combinations of our sensibilities, or do you feel this is a unique project?

[DanaC]

I love Sherlock. I love good tv, British or American. I love shows that merge and meld those sensibilities and styles. Though, I actually think Sherlock is much more British in tone than American. I think possibly what makes it seem more American in style is its production values. Most British tv is produced on a shoe string compared to American shows. Sherlock is a little different. It has a budget - but probably only because they do three 90 minute eps a series :p They have a similar budget to other shows that have 6-8 hour long eps a series.

Its energy and pace is possibly more American. That sort of energy is usually to be found in the experimental, very low budget and raw stuff (Being Human, 1st series original Life on Mars, Utopia etc). Usualy the big ticket stuff lacks that verve and raw energy.

I like the way our two tv cultures inform and borrow from each other. So, for a time, the really good shorter series dramas tended to come from the UK, and mainly from the BBC because they weren't dependent on adverts and sponsors. Then the cable revolution in America, with HBO and the like being able to push the boundaries and take risks changed that landscape. Now, and for maybe the last 10-15 years, the really good dramas are nearly all coming from the US.

And, as I mentioned above, even though I was annoyed about the Being Human remake (given it went into production whilst the original was still on air) I actually ended up loving it. I will always have a special place in my heart for the original, and in particular the first three series. But I also love the remake. They are such different beasts, and yet they clearly share some of the same dna.



What's nice is that now, instead of being all sniffy about the BBC being the bestest drama in the world, we're taking lessons from that cable creativity and risk taking. There's an energy and dazzle about American drama that makes a lot of traditional British drama seem stale and po-faced.

I like this cultural exchange. Some American dramas seem to have taken on something of the brit sensibility (dark humour and grotesques) and British dramas seem to be taking on some of the American sensibilities (visual literacy and energy).

It's all good.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Simlarly with movie remakes - they are usually about bringing an old movie back with a modern twist. That to me, makes perfect sense. The new generation retells an old story in their own way.

Three words for you. The Wicker Man. 'Nuff said.

I also mistrusted War of the Worlds enough not to even watch it. I get that the story stands some updating (having reread it very recently) but I can't help but think if you're going to bugger about with things that much, then why use the same title?
Also, I seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to Tom Cruise. I do not like thee Dr Fell etc.
But I could stomach a musical version of the same novel despite changes and conflations. Horses for courses and all that.

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

So how do you feel about the Sherlock series, which is BBC-produced but arguably very American in its style?

Do you think?
Sorry, redundant question.
It hadn't actually occurred to me. I just thought the BBC were upping their budget. Which all ties in with what Dana is saying I suppose.

[DanaC]

There's probably a lot more difference to be found in comedy and dramedy than in straight drama. We seem to have fairly similar sensibilities in drama. They aren't that different tonally. But comedy and comedy drama shows some of the differences more clearly. There's a different rhythm. Though there's also a lot of crossover. A good example of this, I think, is Greenwing and Scrubs. There's a lot of similarity between the two. Not just in terms of the setting, but the use of surrealism and some of the humour. But they're also very different. The rhythm of delivery is different. And moments of discomfort are often left unresolved.

I can imagine a lot of British comedy having an unfinished, incomplete feel to it for non-Brits.

I mentioned the rhythm of delivery and I think that's one of the key distinctions between American and British comedy. It's difficult to pin down, and there are obviously different rhythms within each tv culture as well. Mainstream sit-coms often have a very different rhythm to the more off the wall surrealist comedies for instance.

Being Human is the show that really drove home that difference for me. Because the first couple of episodes of the American series more or less recreated the original, with a few deviations which then broadened out across the series. So that opening two-parter makes for a brilliant comparison of two distinct tv cultures doing the same story and using the same setups. The dialogue in places is almost a direct lift, just tweaked to for the new setting and audience.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by DanaC

And moments of discomfort are often left unresolved.

I can imagine a lot of British comedy having an unfinished, incomplete feel to it for non-Brits.

I think this is an excellent distillation of one of the major differences. Much of British comedy relies on the innate suffering of one or more people on screen. Less direct jokes, and more interpersonal barbs. And the awkward silence to let them sink in, which is why the pacing always feels different.

Have you ever seen the show Louie? It's got a lot of that deliberately-awkwardly-paced dark comedy that I think goes halfway between American and British timing preferences.

[Sundae]

I'm trying to think my way around the idea that British comedy relies on suffering. Which is paraphrasing you Clod, but it's such a weird concept to me I have to look at it broadly.

Because if it's true then it must say something about us as a nation.
Bill Bryson thinks we laugh more than most nationalities; two Brits on a train he says, will find something to make them laugh far more readily than other peoples.
And I can't talk to Dani without one or both of us seriously cracking up.

But then I think of every comedy I revere and I wonder if perhaps you're right.
And then I think that we might just be more cavalier about our comedy characters, because they are simply shadows on a screen. John Cleese, who loves America so much he lives there, said that an American remake of Fawlty Towers would be disastrous, because "they" (the powers that be) would have to give Basil Fawlty a back-story to explain his hostelry hostility. Like he was a Vietnam vet or something. Whereas we just accept that he's tightly wound (as opposed to wounded) because some people are.

I'll think some more on this.

[DanaC]

I haven't seen Louie, no. I shall give that a go, it looks good.

Another one that arguably takes a more 'Brit' style might be Curb Your Enthusiasm. That did pretty well over here.

I'm not sure I agree that much of the comedy relies on suffering though. Or, rather...it depends what you mean by 'suffering'.

I think a lot of our comedy is about failure. Failure to live up to others' standards, failure to live up to one's own standards. We like failure comedy, because we can relate to it. Ordinary people fucking up in ordinary ways and laughing about it.

Where an individual is the butt of jokes it is usually because they have committed the grave sin of taking themselves too seriously. If they aren't taking themselves seriously, and are still failing then that person is usually the hero of the show. Like Blackadder, for instance. Undoubtedly the hero, but very much an anti-hero.

But a lot of our comedy is based on absurdity. The absurdity of ordinary life writ large in comic setups.

A lot of this is very similar to American comedy. What made Friends funny wasn't their successes, it was their failures. Likewise, Seinfeld.

The difference though, I think lies in the level of resolution. Failure is fine, if the characters come good in the end. Social awkwardness is funny, but something needs to break the tension.

One of the big differences, I think, is delivery. I noticed, for instance, that in the US Being Human, the way jokes were delivered followed a kind of regular rhythm -

[DanaC]

Some of the differences between US and UK Being Human may be about them sitting in different places on the drama-comedy scale. The original Being Human was a comedy drama, and the comedy followed the same rhythms as the drama. With the remake, they also play with drama and comedy, but they separate the two a little more. The drama is played entirely straight, and gets very dark at times, but the comedy is played in a sitcom style.


Probably a closer link could be drawn between something like Big Bang Theory and The IT Crowd. Both are live audience sitcoms, that are slightly off the wall but with traditional elements.

Big Bang Theory



IT Crowd



It isn't as clear with these, but there is a difference in how the comedy is delivered, and the overall rhythm of the scene.

[DanaC]

I realised I hadn't seen any of the US version of Who Do You Think You Are? - it's usually been on at a time I've been busy, or I haven't been drawn to the guests - but I decided the other day to watch the Jim Parsons episode on youtube.

It was lovely. Really interesting. And, I was surprised how similar it was to the UK version - but I did notice a few small differences, mainly around presentation and format. I thought these were quite interesting. The main one is that, on the UK version they always begin with a biog of the star, and then a little interview with music in the background - usually showing photos or clips of recordings etc. On the US version, they start with a run down of the journey that the star is going to take and little clips of what is coming up before they get into any biog or interview.

Here's a couple of examples of the British show (just watch first five minutes to see how it opens)




And here's a couple of example of the US show:

[DanaC]

There was an excellent little comedy drama series a few years ago, called Sirens - I think I posted about it when it was on. Channel 4 in their wisdom decided to drop it after a single series - which was a damn shamed, because it was brilliant. In the same article that discussed the cancellation, it was mentioned that an American remake was in the offing. I wasn't optimistic. I kind of expected it might be another IT Crowd debacle.

It's in its second season now and I finally got round to checking out some clips on youtube - I was pleasantly surprised. Different feel to it (feels more of a straight up sitcom, less of a 'dramedy' like the original) but I like the chemistry between the leads - which was the biggest plus for the original. I might give it a go after all.

Here's a couple of promos for the original (yes that is Robb Stark):






And for the US remake:





The final scene in this promo is what sells it for me

[Clodfobble]

We've been watching Sirens; I didn't realize it was a remake of a UK show. It's been reasonably funny so far.

[DanaC]

Yeah - it looks quite good. Different but good. I'm going to try an ep tonight.

You should definitely check out the original if you can find it - a really under appreciated little gem. Very quirky. I get the impression the remake has been mainstreamed a little.