Things that you know will be shit

[Chili]

The Fawlty Towers attempts are always fascinating. I've always been curious about 'Oh No, Not Them', the US Young Ones pilot with Nigel Planer (the title sounds like a parody the Young Ones would do themselves). I always presumed it isn't as bad as imagined and probably like yank Red Dwarf in that the gags probably just don't transfer over as well.

 

[BomberPat]

Fawlty Towers always seems like the watermark for Americans (or, more accurately, American networks) not "getting" British comedy. British sitcoms tend to be built around either a loser or a bastard, and ideally someone like Blackadder who's basically both - a smug, bullying prick who outsmarts everyone around him, but who never actually wins, whereas a lot of American comedy is intended to be relatable, or underdog lovable loser stuff, where you're rooting for the main character to "win". Throw in how much of British comedy is, explicitly or otherwise, built on class differences, I can see why it never really translates to America. What's interesting is that I think Arrested Development is the best American sitcom of the last few decades, and that's built on exactly the kind of thing I've just described as being quintessentially "British" comedy.

The other way around is maybe more interesting - we've never had a problem watching and understanding American TV on its own merits, so trying to translate it into something more "British" feels like a waste of time. 

Excuse the David Walliams, but one of the funniest things on the old Lucas & Walliams series was their sketch of an American remake of Only Fools & Horses, from crowbarring in weird characters, stagey live audience production, reducing everything to lowest common denominator catchphrases, keeping one member of the British cast, and not understanding the premise:

 

[Carbomb]

I'm also reminded of that well-cited Stephen Fry interview where he's asked by an audience member what he reckons is the difference between British and American comedy, and he goes into some impressive detail about it; about how American humour is rooted in life being improvable by works, and therefore refusing to self-deprecate or see oneself in any kind of bad light, whilst British comedy tends to be based on failure and our tendency to make a glory of it.

[Chili]

What I'm curious about is if you're making a UK version of Cheers then it'll surely need to retain some of the original shows elements or something, because just doing a sitcom in a bar isn't Cheers. Other shows have bars. Unless I've grossly overlooked how dramatic licence is used in 2024? 

[DavidB6937]

4 minutes ago, Chili said:

 just doing a sitcom in a bar isn't Cheers. 

Sadly I imagine that's exactly how the brainstorming session went down.

Bar ✓

People ✓

[Chili]

Just now, DavidB6937 said:

Sadly I imagine that's exactly how the brainstorming session went down.

Bar ✓

People ✓

Yeah that's why I'm confused though. The reason the Upper Hand is a retool of Whose the Boss, is that it uses scripts or plots from the original and semi adapted them for the UK plot set-up. So in my noggin you can't do a show in a pub with no relation to Cheers at all but say it's our version of Cheers just on that alone.

[Carbomb]

36 minutes ago, Chili said:

Yeah that's why I'm confused though. The reason the Upper Hand is a retool of Whose the Boss, is that it uses scripts or plots from the original and semi adapted them for the UK plot set-up. So in my noggin you can't do a show in a pub with no relation to Cheers at all but say it's our version of Cheers just on that alone.

Who's The Boss/The Upper Hand is a very specific, identifiable premise right from the beginning, though - widow with a son hires a widower with a daughter to be a housekeeper. That's before using the original material.

[Chili]

1 minute ago, Carbomb said:

Who's The Boss/The Upper Hand is a very specific, identifiable premise right from the beginning, though - widow with a son hires a widower with a daughter to be a housekeeper. That's before using the original material.

Exactly, there's a lot more set up there 'show in a pub', surely Early Doors is Cheers.

[Dr. Alan Grant]

There certainly are worse hosts they could have gone with (Roman Kemp or Joel Dommett), but this is surely going to be awful.

[wordsfromlee]

It was originally going to be Paddy McGuinness

[westlondonmist]

Don't like Flintoff but that's better than McGuinness. As someone pointed out previously (I can't remember who exactly on here), bullseye worked because the host told crap jokes, had no comic timing and sounded like he smoked 50 a day. It had a dingy set to go with it and it somehow combined to make a good show. A remake will always struggle. 

[Scratch]

Watching Bullseye now, I realise:

1) The questions were incredibly hard
2) The contestants had zero charisma and so didn’t try and become the start of the show
3) The audience were all middle aged or more and wore head-to-toe smart attire exclusively in fawn
4) Jim Bowen was horrendously sexist
5) Tony Greene gave a sense of legitimacy to the dart bits
6) The world’s sixth-best Brian Clough impersonator once competed with a neck that’d make a giraffe sulk. 
 

None of this will be true in 2024 and so it’ll be terrible (apart from the lack of blatant misogyny of course). As was said above, Bullseye worked for hundreds of reasons that weren’t about answering questions and throwing darts.