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.