I’ve watched Cordon (it’s a Belgian show) about a viral epidemic involving a lockdown to a specific city (in Antwerp) which aired sometime in 2014. There’s a US remake of that show under a different name: Containment (the main setting was changed to Atlanta), however the remake just sucks since the writing is garbage (they’ve tried their best on retaining the nuances from the original but did a bad job at it).
Skins US, and Being Human US
They tried launching the British series The IT Crowd in many countries. The Us version never got past the pilot stage. About the only good thing was Richard Ayoade reprising his role oddly. But the simple copy and paste of the script along with the complete lack of cast chemistry doomed it from the out. I like Richard but he can’t cary an entire show on his own.
Matt Berry on the other hand. He didn’t come to the US/Canada till the spinoff of Watiti’s New Zealand movie What We Do In The Shadows. And really kind of led and made the show. Though the entire cast there was great and had a lot of chemistry.
You should also (not) check out the American pilot of Peep Show 😬
There was a US remake of the IT Crowd. It was verbatim the UK show, but without any of the British charm. It was so bad.
ETA: i was disappointed to see Richard Ayoade was apart of it. :/
Ugly Betty, a pale imitation of the Colombian telenovela
Taskmaster US comes to mind
That never happened, actually. Nope. There is no such thing. Simply a figment of your imagination.
No need to fact check me, either.
i had completely blocked that from memory
We already have Gamechanger on Dropout.tv to fill that void.
I still can’t believe how unfunny and unlikable everyone was in that show.
I heard the US remade Utopia but I’m not even looking, it was already perfect.
It’s really bad. The casting wasn’t great (most actors were fine, just bad fits) and the changes they made were pretty stupid and unnecessary.
It also didn’t have the slow-but-tense pacing of the original. Everything felt so rushed like it was the last couple seasons of The Boys.
I wanted to love it because I love the original but I was just hatewatching it by the 4th episode. It took a cool and unique show and dumbed it down for the lowest common denominator.
Original show was fantastic. Watched a couple episodes of the US one - you made the right choice.
There was a US version of The Inbetweeners.
Awful. Just terrible. Arguably one of the worst “remakes”. That and The IT Crowd and Coupling.
Came here to post Coupling. I honestly don’t even think the original holds up now, but the US version was trash from the start.
They are really bad, but nothjng ever comes close to taskmaster imo.
Red Dwarf. They made a pilot. It was terrible.
I heard just today that there was a bad version of Taskmaster, despite it being successful in many other national varieties.
Which is amazing because how do you fuck up Taskmaster?
Veep felt like a step back from The Thick Of It despite being made afterwards.
It was fine, it was fun and funny. But pales compared to the British original.
They’re comedy actors acting in a comedy, rather than actors doing stuff we can laugh about.
Got down voted to oblivion when I said this on Reddit a few years back. Veep is very tame in comparison
I agree. And it’s much less stressful because it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
The Thick of It was unique in how the comedy came from everyone and everything being incredibly serious.
the us remake of men behaving badly
The Agency can’t hold a candle to its French original, Le Bureau des Legendes or, “The Bureau”. The French version is so much better and more realistic spy than any other series I might have watched. It does to spies what The Wire did to drug crime and policing back int the day. At least in my opinion (I’m not French).
There’s also an unlicensed version of the Spanish series “The Ministry of Time” called Timeless. I think they settled, but I also think the end result of the adapted copy (as in, changing every subject matter so it matched a US-based timeline and events, and hence cutting the whole history to the last couple centuries basically) looked…poor.
The Office. They replaced the brilliant Ricky Gervais with the black hole of comedy that is Steve carrel, and shit all over the whole point of tim and dawn’s characters, “they’re perfect for each other but for whatever reason it never happens”, so they could have a wedding episode and a baby episode for sweeps.
Ricky is painful
The character was meant to be stupid and cringy, the sort of boss who thinks he’s super cool and everyone loves him but really they can’t stand him. Most people have had a boss like that and Ricky played it brilliantly. Steve carrell played it like the lovable goofball who actually is friends with his staff. NBC took something real and unique and turned it into another boring generic workplace sitcom. Mary Tyler Moore did it better 40 years prior.
It was good, the US one is better. Its a rarity but well deserved.
Ricky manahed to find a role where being annoying worked and so he excelled, now we have to hear his pound shop takes on everything. Accountant Russel Brand
British office was only a couple seasons and 14 episodes. The US version stretched that initial Jim and Pam plot as far as it could go. They only started dating after 50 something episodes over 3 seasons and didn’t get married til season 6.
Good point. Stretching it out/milking it is another reason the US version was shit.
