Amy brought over the pilot episode of NBC’s remake of The Office which aired there last Friday night. Words cannot express what a waste of time, effort, resource and whatever else this is and has and always will have been. One would imagine that it’ll surely be put out of its misery after one “season”.
People stateside who were interested, presumably saw the original. Nobody else out there probably cares or will recognise the enormity of the folly associated with it but heads oughtta roll. All of the characters have been re-named and even the approximation of “Keith” is beyond all reasonable ken, y'ken?. The show lasts for 25 minutes(ish) and is hard going. Much has been made about it not having a “laugh track” and how this will confuse the American viewer. No it sodding won’t, because the channel will have been flipped well before they notice that it ain’t there - such is the chasm between the appropriation of what was formerly comedy gold and this travesty. Where much of the success lay in the uncomfortable familiarity and realistic nature of the material, this is a flat, dull atrocity. And, when they try to americanise the fare, then it slips another couple of rungs. Whoever sanctioned this could use a shot of “downsizing” themselves. Far as I know, the US AbFab was aborted due to the fact that it quite obviously didn’t work. I have no idea if the same people or indeed network was/were involved or who did the decent thing on that score but the culprits here require a loan of the radar that arrived at that decision.
I am still somewhat aghast and it took three episodes of The Honeymooners to restore my faith in how American comedy once, and very often still does, tower over the occasional (accidental) UK hit show.
1 comment:
"Americanizing" GeeBee sitcoms has been big stuff w/the Amerigan nets ever since ALL IN THE FAMILY, SANFORD (STEPTOE) AND SON, and THREE'S COMPANY hit megabuck paydirt back in the seventies, and I guess given the paucity of ideas it's much easier to copy UK trends no matter how banal they be. What makes things worse than they are is that these recent attempts (including MEN BEHAVING BADLY and the thankfully cancelled provincial take of COUPLING) over here reportedly made no attempts to change British colloquialisms to suit Amerigan consumption! (at least the Yankeefied versions of ARE YOU BEING SERVED and RED DWARF didn't make it past the pilot stage.) I expect THE OFFICE (the original take which I find to be rather coma-inducing myself) to follow suit and get axed rather quickly which would be fun to see given how NBC has been promoting this show to the roof and deserves a hard comedown. (I'm tempted to say that, as MAD magazine once reported, that the laugh track refused to guffaw over the thing, though NBC did try a laugh-track-less show in the sixties, and MY MOTHER THE CAR is legendary as far as US tee-vee flops go!) In my humble opinion, television at least over here hasn't been funny at all for generations, except for classic fifties/sixties programs which one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere on the box these sorry days! Stick with THE HONEYMOONERS...even the late-sixties and seventies version tops anything you'll see elsewhere on the boob tube!
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