Gained In Translation
Reader Lawrence King writes:
Why in the world do Americans remake English television shows like The Office or Life on Mars anyway? Why not just show the originals on television here? Imagine if we re-made Beatles songs or David Bowie songs with all-American musicians, changing "the fireman never wears a Mac" to "the fire fighter doesn't wear a raincoat"...
There's a lot of time to fill on the airwaves, which may explain why there's a long tradition of adapting TV shows, especially from Britain. Sometimes it's practically the same thing with a different accent, like American Idol, and sometimes it's so Americanized it moves far away from the original, such as All In The Family or Sanford And Son.
The point is, no matter where it comes from, every TV show has to stand on its own. No one really cares about the source.
I do wonder, however, why no one's ever thought to air actual British shows directly on our maor networks.
Speaking of changing lyrics, I'm reminded of this thought on The Hollies' "Bus Stop." From the original:
That's the way the whole thing started
Silly, but it's true
Thinking of a sweet romance
Beginning in a queue
They could have recorded an "American" version:
That's the way the whole thing started
Silly, but it's fine
Thinking of a sweet romance
Beginning in a line
Of course, they'd have to update the song regularly, since the line "Some day my name and hers are going to be the same" doesn't play as well as it used to.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:14 AM
7 Comments:
Well, one reason networks don't air British shows is because a British season, or series, is rarely longer than twelve episodes, and usually six. Our seasons are two to four times as long, so they wouldn't fill the time slot. Also, if the show's a hit, there's no way to renew a British show: it's basically over.
We need to save the actual British shows for PBS to show as culture
First saw Monty Python, Fawlty Towers (also Are You Being Served? and Keeping Up Appearances). There is a regular British TV night with sitcoms on the New Hampshire Public TV station.
NEGuy
Another reason British shows probably aren't transferred whole to U.S. TV is production values which, because of MUCH lower budgets, are usually not up to the standard expected by American audiences.
That said, I still think they should try to air a few and see what happens. Maybe there's room in America for series that rely on Story rather than Slick.
Sure that line still works -- I had a colleague way back in 1996 who took his wife's last name when they married. I thought it was just successful attention-whoring (they got a short article in the NYTimes style section), but who knows, it still might catch on.
Maybe all we lack is a process for putting a foreign (or independently produced) show on prime time.
Back in 1983, Phil Collins recorded "You Can't Hurry Love", and it became a huge hit on pop radio and on MTV. Even though pop wasn't my favorite genre, and even though I resented Collins for moving Genesis away from prog-rock, I liked this song a lot.
Shortly after that, I heard the Supremes' version from 1966. It was the exact same song. If the music executives had re-released the original in 1983 and promoted it the same way they promoted Collins' version, it logically would have done just as well.
Why didn't this happen? As far as I can tell, it's simply that nobody in the music world ever re-releases old songs, and there is no existing mechanism to do that. (Of course, there are dedicated "oldies" and "classic rock" and "Seventies" stations that play old records, but that's something different -- I'm talking about just re-releasing an old record to the pop hits radio stations. Which is just never done.)
In England they regularly play American television shows. But we never do it the other way around. Maybe NBC should put some English shows on at 10 PM? That would be cheaper than the Leno show, and much cheaper than paying Conan to go away....
NEGuy: English high-brow humor that is considered "over the heads" of Americans does end up on PBS. And if they had tried to release "Fawty Towers" or "Yes Minister" or "Red Dwarf" on CBS prime-time in the 1970s or 1980s, they would have bombed.
But the low-brow shows like "The Office" ought to be marketable on American prime-time, given that a clone of the same show is marketable.
Larry is essentially right, though there have been rare cases of old hits charting again. For instance, Chubby Checker's "The Twist" was #1 in 1960, and went to #1 again in 1962. And "Monster Mash" was #1 in 1962 and made it to #10 in 1973. But these were anomalies that generally happened not due to a planned re-release, but an initial unplanned spurt in popularity from some outside source. Same for successful sales of old albums, which happens all the time. For example, since Michael Jackson died his albums have been selling as much as most new albums.
I've never fully understood why you can't release old singles, while covers that hardly change them are acceptable. You might even think record companies would like this, since they've alread paid for them. But I suppose a system exists that the youth of America demand new songs done in their styles. (Like they'd know?)
I remember hearing Phil Collins' "You Can't Hurry Love" and asking myself what was the point. A cover should either do something new with a song, or do it better than the original. This did neither.
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