US Version of "Spaced" Pilot Ordered.

[McLeary]

Married For Life (starring RUSS ABBOTT) and Days Like These were both mercifully short-lived.

[Al K]

Originally Posted by McLeary

Married For Life (starring RUSS ABBOTT)

And until now I had managed to convince myself that show never existed.

[pANDAS Radio]

Originally Posted by McLeary

Hey, it could be worse. Remember the British versions of Married With Children or That 70s Show?

they were both awful, Hippies was better.

[softparody]

Not only is it the wrong country for this to work, it's the wrong fucking decade.

FAO America: Get yer own fucking tv shows and stop shitting all over ours. If you want them so bad, air them as they are, don't waste money remaking them.

Sarah xx

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by softparody

FAO America: Get yer own fucking tv shows and stop shitting all over ours. If you want them so bad, air them as they are, don't waste money remaking them.

I am always really amused by comments like that given the massive amount of US TV shows and films that we import to the UK.

[pANDAS Radio]

Yeah, and the fact that Paramount Comedy did air Spaced in the US.

[Quiz Bhoy]

The humour won't work. They'll have to re write EVERYTHING!

[pANDAS Radio]

True, but don't they usually call it a remake even if they're just stealing the concept? Like a nod n' a wink to the originators.

[softparody]

Originally Posted by Hammer

I am always really amused by comments like that given the massive amount of US TV shows and films that we import to the UK.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with them being imported and shown in other countries, but remaking a program [for a country that speaks the same language!] just seems stupid. The humour in Spaced is very british humour and it's just not going to work if they remake it.

It just seems that over the past couple of years they have been making shitty remakes of all our decent tv shows. Ever since Friends finished, everyone has been smearing shit on their walls and the TV people need to find a replacement for it because sooner or later people *will* catch on that Friends reruns aren't that good.

Sarah xx

[endless psych]

Originally Posted by pANDAS Radio

True, but don't they usually call it a remake even if they're just stealing the concept? Like a nod n' a wink to the originators.

Here how does it actually work? Do folks from various networks go around trying to sell or buy ideas or concepts?

In most cases things need to be retooled a dillon so they appeal to different cultural markets (rather then say appealing to a US anglophile audience only) but by doing so they generally end up with something that bears almost no semblance to the original 'program'. Can people be sued over 'concepts' is I suppose what I'm wondering (and I assume the answer is yes).

Originally Posted by softparody

Yeah, I don't have a problem with them being imported and shown in other countries, but remaking a program [for a country that speaks the same language!] just seems stupid.

Britain and America are two countries divided by...? :-

A) A common language

B) The Atlantic ocean

C) A love of marmots.

[pANDAS Radio]

Originally Posted by endless psych

Here how does it actually work? Do folks from various networks go around trying to sell or buy ideas or concepts?

Well concepts can be copyrighted and therefore sued over. Best example is quiz shows and reality shows like Big Brother, The Weakest Link etc.. which get syndicated. But i suppose a sitcom with an easily definable concept could be looked at in the same way and subject to legal issues, especially if the originators felt their intelectual property had been stolen or bastardised without their knowledge. Stating it as a remake from the start probably means they want to stick closely enough to the concept that it is recognisably influenced by the other series, that'll mean that Pegg and Hynes will most likely have ok'd the idea for a fee that allows lines and scenarios to be lifted directly from their script.

The US version of Coupling also failed. I blame that on the laughter track and the fact that Melissa George was replaced between the pilot and the actual series starting.

[McLeary]

Aye, Pegg and big Jess will have been richly reimbursed for this, so let's not have them defined as starving artists having their work of genius co-opted by some conglomerate here.

Spaced was the Simpsons crossed with a sitcom from the start anyway, I see no reason why this remake should necessarily be exponentially worse than the original thing (which I think is insanely over-rated anyway).


And again, much hilarity at anyone decrying American TV, which pisses over our output from a vast height and has done for years. British TV has never been worse than it is right now.

[Dec]

We hit out with shite like celebrity dancing on ice, and then fly the flag for how great british TV is. DERP.

[Crazy Ian]

Originally Posted by ¡Punk!

Wasn't there an American version of Men Behaving Badly too?

And Coupling... and Ultraviolet.. and The Last Train all equally as bad as the next..

[Stew]

Annnnnyway, back to Spaced and Simon Pegg released a statement on his website where he was originally pretty scathing, but then amended it on realising that he was going to get money for it.