Last night there was absolutely bugger all on the tv, so after a few minutes playing couch commando with the remote control (and a spot of serious channel hopping) I stumble across a programme on the FX channel that feels more than familiar...
Yes it's "Life on Mars USA"!! EXCELLENT think I, for I Love love LOVE the original and I've heard that the US have done their usual trick of taking a classic British programme, giving it an American cast and doing bog all else with it.. ok so the cast will be different but the jokes will be the same... cant be THAT bad then can it?? I mean after all.. the British version was absolutely brilliant and it's essentially the same so I snuggle down to watch.
Having seen it already I know the story, I am touched when Sam Tyler wakes up in the 70's (albeit in Noo Nork) and looks up to see the gleaming twin towers - nice touch, think I.. this could be quite good.. and I get excited as I know what's to come next....The Gene Genie.
This is what I got.
Wtf is this shit?
We give you the GOD that is Gene Hunt and you do this to him??? Harvey Keitel? what?
WHY?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Why would you do this?
Harvey Keitel is a fabulous actor... but he is NOT Gene Hunt... allow me to explain... bugger it.. lets have a look.. (The clip gets a bit dodgy when the music kicks in cos you cant hear the dialogue too well over the song - which is a bit of a travesty really cos theres some cracking quotes in there..)
So you see?? Gene Hunt is a b*stard...of that there is no doubt, but a gorgeous one. He's not an aging police officer like Keitel..even I could knock out Harvey Keitel.. lol
In the end I had to turn the show off... it's just not right and I'm afraid I wont be watching again... it has however given me the Life on Mars bug and I'm gonna have to buy the UK version on DVD whislt they're still cheap. haha
So then I got to thinking and I looked it up online, the US have not commissioned anymore episodes which is a total shame for even if we Britons dont like their version the show itself continued for another great series here and then we have had 2 series of its spin off "Ashes to Ashes" with Gene still played by Philip Glenister and DCI Alex "Bollinger Knickers" Drake played by Keeley Hawes, set in the 1980's and equally as brilliant.
I wondered how many programmes our US counterparts miss out on by taking the scripts and recasting them.. I dont know why they do it..maybe they don't get our accents (I can understand that, I live here and there are some dialects that confuse me too!!) which is fine I guess but it is notoriously difficult to translate the saracastic undertones in British humour.. I think sometimes it works - the US version of "The Office" is incredibly funny even though I prefer the English version, it still works both ways.. but most times something is lost in the translation.
I looked up some of the shows that we've sold to the US.. things like "Wife Swap" and "How Clean is your House" work wherever you are.. especially if you sell the other version back to us cos we love to see how the other half live of course.. As does "Pop Idol/American Idol" or "Britain/America's Got Talent" etc.
But we gave them Life on Mars and imo they ruined it.. as they did with "Absolutely Fabulous" and on the list was a bunch of British comedies and their US counterparts that only a pilot got made.. now we know they're funny.. "Fawlty Towers" was one of them and that has has THREE attempts at a remake.. (I dont know how successful they were) why? Why not just show the original?
"The IT Crowd" - hilariously funny and well received here and only the pilot made in the US, same with "Are You Being Served" - unaired pilot episode, "Coupling" - US version cancelled after a few episodes, it went on for years here, "Eleventh Hour" which was cancelled by the US network after 1 season despite pulling in 12million viewers and "Red Dwarf" which had 8 series (I think, could be 9) here but 2 pilot episodes in the USA that werent even aired.
I could go on but I think you get my point.
I don't get it.. as a nation we're sarcastic but funny and our comedy and not only that but our drama's too are brilliant.. LEAVE THEM ALONE... buy the episodes and air them if you want to share.. like we do with yours, we love "Friends", "Sex in the City", "LOST" etc, we watch hundreds of your shows and we appreciate them in their original form..and if you ever want to appreciate the full effect of ours that's how you should watch them too.. in their original form.
No comments:
Post a Comment