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I'm pretty sure this pilot is the same script as episode 1 of the original UK series. Clearly someone felt the need to recast and reshoot the series with US actors (plus Richard Ayoade), like they did the US Office.

I wonder if that's old thinking (or wasn't actually needed) - the amount of UK TV that's now on Netflix and other OTT platforms seems to suggest that US audiences are open to enjoying original UK series without being reshot. Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?

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Part of it is simply different television formats. The Office UK specifically aired on BBC One without commercials which meant that it had to be cut down to fit on a major network's timeslot of 20-24 min. Shows like that typically have to go to special TV stations like PBS or BBC America in order to get a commercial-free timeslot or (in BBC America's case) finagled into a less common time slot with weird commercial break timings. Even with shows that have the same length as a standard US show, the break timings are at different points making it more complicated for TV networks to schedule ad space around.

And then there's the larger issue of a lot of British TV actors simply not having the recognizability of their American counterparts which is a major selling point (esp in the pre-web media days). Steve Carrell was a minor star from his time on the Daily Show which made him a good fit to 'sell' the US Office.

>Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?

It was a minor cult hit, especially among the technologically-inclined demographic. But it's not especially well-known.

I learned this is why David Attenborough's nature documentaries now have the obligatory 10 minute "making of" featurette at the end. The first 50 minutes is sold overseas as an hour long documentary (with ad breaks), and the last 10 minutes is for the BBC audience in the UK to fill it up to an hour.

Interesting! That's usually my favourite bit.

The IT Crowd was actually aired on Channel 4, not the BBC. Channel 4 is publicly owned (for now…) but is fully funded through adverts. The ad break timings likely don’t match what you have in the US though (at the start and end and a single break in the middle over a 30 minute runtime).

If you watch an NFL game on Sky there are a load of breaks where they cut to a UK analysis crew. Every single one of those is an ad break that they have in the US but not in the UK. Sky does still has ads, but clearly far far fewer than the US is willing to tolerate.

NFL is an extreme example but I always found the comparison interesting.

The NFL is the most ridiculous two hours of television in the US. I don't really understand why people put up with the amount of ads they shove into a game.

There was service years ago--maybe it's still around--from one of the TV networks that would cut a whole game into 15-20 minutes, mostly be not showing any ads during the game, and cutting out all of the commentary/standing around.

The on-air duration of an NFL game is actually closest to 3 hours. It's 2 to 2.5 hours when shown without ads.

The NFL GamePass service that you can subscribe to (how I mostly watch the NFL from outside the US) offers 'Game in 40 minutes' (sometimes called Condensed). It just cuts from play-to-play-to-play. It's a great way to be able to watch a couple of other NFL games in a given week (fits nicely into a lunch break), but I do actually miss the proper commentary. Good commentary teams are very helpful in breaking down what happened in the blur of action that is each play.

For those wondering: a 30 minute slotted network show in the US is 21-22 minutes long. A 60 minute is simply double - 42-44 minutes long.

How many breaks this works out to varies by show, since they try to cut it at strategic points. Usually 2-4 per 30 minutes.

If anyone has actual data on this I'd love to see it. Especially historical data.

In 2019, it was 14-18 minutes of explicit advertising per hour depending on the network and the genre (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025656/ad-time-primetim...), up from about 13-16 minutes per hour in 2009 (https://time.com/96303/tv-commercials-increasing/). "Bumpers", network identifiers, and other content inserted by the airing network that is not ad space sold to a third party are not included in all of the counts. Local (as opposed to national) advertising time is also missing from some of these datasets. Overall, the duration of scripted US television shows is now approximately 40 minutes per hour: http://www.waynesthisandthat.com/commerciallength.htm

Other ways television advertising has increased over time:

Number of ad breaks. In the 1950s and early 1960s ads were aired before and after shows, often with the host of the show doing the ad reads for one or two products that were billed as the show's "sponsors". A break for ads in the middle of the content was added in the mid-1960s, and the number of breaks per hour increased at least into the 1990s. https://ibuzzle.com/television-advertising-history

Number of ads per break. Television ads have gotten generally shorter over time. 30 seconds became the norm during the 1970s. From 2009 to 2019, the percentage of ads that were 15 seconds long increased from 35% to 42% (https://time.com/96303/tv-commercials-increasing/).

Amount of paid product placement inside the shows. In 2009, product placement occupied between 5.5 minutes and 19.25 minutes per hour, with unscripted shows the highest (https://www.marketingcharts.com/television-9434). Spending on television product placement has increased since then (https://www.marketingcharts.com/cross-media-and-traditional/...).

Addition of advertising to previously ad-free platforms. I recall that most cable networks originally did not air ads but cannot find the data to back that up. In 2021-2022, streaming services have increasingly added ads: https://www.marketingcharts.com/television/tv-advertising-22... In a 2022 survey, 41% of American TV-watching adults felt there were too many ads on television vs. 18-25% for various streaming platforms (https://hubresearchllc.com/reports/?category=2022&title=2022...).

Fully funded? I was under the impression that they get a small slice of the licence fee?

No, they are fully funded by adverts and licencing their programmes to other channels and platforms. See the 4th question in this FAQ:

https://www.channel4.com/corporate/about-4/operating-respons...

There's been a fair bit of misunderstanding around Channel 4 since Nadine Dorris (ex Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) aanounced plans to sell off Channel 4. A lot of people never reaslised it was publicly owned and then assumed it was the same model as the BBC, but with some adverts.

S4C (Sianel 4 Cymru, Channel 4 Wales) receives some licence fee funding (partially via the BBC making programmes for it), but it's a separate entity to Channel 4

Only the BBC gets money from the license fee. Part of the strong objection to the license fee is that BBC’s international arm already is a huge cash cow, so BBC UK could still remain ad-free.

They have a remit [0] for what content to create, but don't receive any licence fee

[0] https://www.channel4.com/corporate/about-4/what-we-do/channe...

Mostly agree with all you have to say minus the reference as Steve carrell being a safe, reliable pick at the time period. Being on the daily show is a great metric for a casting director as far as quality goes but in reality he had close to zero exposure and public recognition before the office.

That fact is supported by how bad the first season of the US office did ratings wise. People warmed up to it quickly thanks to the quality of writing, but the showrunners and producers clearly didn't feel confident in the future success of Steve carrell as a leading star or they wouldn't have ordered he get hair plugs to make him more look more likable.

Lastly, there is something to be said, at least regarding comedy, about differences in taste between cultures. British and US comedy have often been quite different over the last 70 years and is evident in the stylistic differences between the british and us versions of the office in season 1.

He was in Anchorman as a pretty iconic character, he wasn't exactly obscure.

40 Year Old Virgin came out the same year as the first season of The Office, I'd imagine that helped give it an early boost too (edit: and vice versa).

I believe this is why The Office got a second season. The network and audiences weren't convinced by the first season, but Carell became a star overnight, so the network was willing to keep the show going. Then the writing team found their grove, delivered a second season vastly superior to the first, and the rest is history.

Bruce Almighty in 2003 was his first big theatrical break iirc.

All very true. And he is gold in all of those, although he was still relatively unknown at the time.

Is there any actual evidence for the Hair Plugs thing? I've heard it frequently but also heard that it was actually lighting and styling.

We know Ricky Gervais also did not like Steve Carrel. Source: himself during one of the Golden Globe ceremonies he was hosting.

Got a clip? This feels like you being oblivious that he's pretending...

I'd guess it's in here https://youtube.com/watch?v=iJOb9xHggS4

This is a mix including that moment in the Golden Globes. It does not look like pretending to me, but who knows. (around 0:55)

I forgot the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFbTUbY-bcU

> And then there's the larger issue of a lot of British TV actors simply not having the recognizability of their American counterparts which is a major selling point

Just a note that I don't think any of the actors in the original version of The Office were recognizable in the UK before it aired. So either it is more important in the US to have a big name attached, or TV execs at least believe so, or they remake it for other reasons and the big name is a nice-to-have.

I think Martin Freeman was semi-established at the time, though obviously not the renowned actor he is now. And Gervais and Merchant had a small following from their radio show.

The stakes are high for primetime network television in general in the US. Only about 20% of new shows are renewed for a second season, and showrunners desperately want a multi-season TV show to put on their CV.

To add more perspective - of the projects a network picks up in a given year, only about 18% will go on to produce a pilot that same year. And usually if a pilot isn't greenlit for a project in its first year, it's effectively dead. So the fact that the IT Crowd (US) got a pilot at all is already remarkable.

There are detective shows called Endeavour and Lewis running (repeats) in the UK; they're offshoots of the Morse series. They have ad-breaks, i.e. the narrative stops and the show titles appear; but there are no ads. I think that's on ITV. And sometimes there are ads between the titles.

There's something I was watching on Sky, that had ad-breaks, but no ads; instead, they showed a still frame saying that normal content would be resumed shortly.

When they do show ads, they are nearly all:

* Motorised recliner armchairs

* No-medical life insurance

* Home equity release plans

* Charity appeals with fluffy puppies and sobbing grandmas.

That is, the ads mostly seem to be pitched at retired people, and the ad slots are being sold to low-budget advertisers. I use a PVR, so I barely notice ads. Most cable and satellite providers these days provide a PVR as part of the service. So my guess is the TV advertising business model is collapsing; only poor people, and people too demented to learn to use a PVR, actually watch ads.

Meanwhile, running an ad slot with no ads in it must be saying something rather loud to potential advertisers: "We can't sell this ad slot, so lowball your bid!".

Sky paused adverts recently out of respect to Brenda's passing (though they didn't note that on the static logo). Was that what you saw?

I don't watch TV regularly but I've never seen them run out of adverts for slots; with bidding I would doubt that happens much?

No, that's not what I saw. Firstly, not all Sky ad slots were placeholders; and secondly, "Brenda" (damn, what's that from?) popped her clogs ages ago. The wall-to-wall BBC propaganda ended three days ago. TV presenters are no longer wearing black suits and ties. Newspapers no longer carry a dozen grovelling headlines on the same subject.

Not a reader of Private Eye then? This should help on the Brenda question

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_and_organisatio...

You may enjoy Private Eye, worth buying a trial copy.

Thanks. I think I last bought a copy of Private Eye about 50 years ago; Ingrams was the editor, and Paul Foot was still writing for them. I loved the schoolboy gags (I was a schoolboy), but they put out some very serious content that the MSM wouldn't touch.

The image was that the PE journalists basically spent their working day hanging out in Fleet Street bars, shooting the breeze with journos from mainstream papers, and collecting gossip. I have no idea how accurate that picture is.

It was mildly annoying that they dropped the ads, but kept the breaks, just showing a card saying ’no ads here’ for several minutes at a time. I guess they went for the minimal effort approach to maintain timings.

Let's face it, the US office was a more engaging show cast with funnier & better looking actors. That's really the secret to its success - it was just really good, end season slump not withstanding.

It's subjective - I found the UK office to be more funny and authentic. I couldn't watch the US version without cringing at the unnatural sitcom-iness of it.

To be fair the US office was as misguided and unfunny as this IT crowd remake until they started deviating from the source material.

Michael Scott not being David Brent is what saved the US office, and going in a wildly different direction is what allowed it to become what it ultimately did.

I say this as someone who loved both shows.

American humour is it's own thing and I never understood why they ever attempted to remake things 1 to 1. I started watching the US Office a few seasons in and for a long time never realised the early episodes were so misguided. I think having independent versions of The Office tailored to each country would have been a fantastic concept.

I think my issue with the UK office is that it was just too bleak and dull to be funny. I got the jokes, but it didn't make laugh, just made me kind of feel worse about life.

This is not a "UK comedy is has more flawed characters" thing either, IT Crowd, Peep Show were full of terrible, flawed, miserable human beings but there were still some drama & larger than life aspects to those shows that gave it some element of "relief". UK office has no relief, it's just pure misery.

> UK office [..] was just too bleak and dull

> [..] has no relief, it's just pure misery.

That's kind of the entire point mate. There is plenty of relief, but it's not your typical American sitcom relief.

I think Bill Bryson commented that, in the US, the dominant culture is an excited hope about how much better the future will be. In the UK, our culture is a mild surprise that things aren’t worse than they are right now.

Yeah look I understand the UK is a bleak and miserable place filled with bleak and miserable people, mate. But to those who have dwelt in lands with sunshine and hope the original Office is a shock to the senses.

As someone who physically lives in neither, and in the "Sunshine state" of Australia. The original office wasn't a shock to my senses. Australia is definitely closer to British humour than americano humour.

I think it'd be fair to say that the US has now somewhat embraced the less happy cheerful variety of sitcom; a lot of modern US stuff falls into that category. It definitely hadn't in 2005 when the US Office came out, though.

The UK office felt like it could have been a genuine documentary vs the American version which felt more like a sit com.

Not sure how you can find this bleak and dull:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Eaz-1_3iA

Although it is funny it is mostly cringey and, if you have ever worked in an office in the UK (in Slough of all places) it brings back some of the bleakness and dullness of the average office in the UK.

Having said that, if you know the context, that is, if you have watched the series, the looks and expressions of the actors are priceless, relatable and advance the story in what could have been a just slapstick moment.

I never know if I love or hate the Office UK as some scenes bring me to tears and others I just can't watch to the end. It is a masterfull piece of TV. I have only watched a few scenes of the US version on YouTube and I find them funny. It is a very different beast.

Knowing the landscape of British TV at the time makes you appreciate The Office even more. It was awash with fly on the wall documentaries following people around their daily and working lives.

Stars of these programmes were just making their way into celebrity, like Jeremy Spake and Maureen from Driving School, and the people on slightly later shows knew their fame could be a path to them 'making it'. David Brent falls right into this category.

The Office was so incredibly well observed and authentic, it's a work of art.

The US one had other goals, it's just an American sitcom with a nod to mockumentary and zany unbelievable antics.

I feel exactly the same way. Shows like Black Books or In betweeners I find funny with a dark humour, but there is a kind of uk comedy show (Staht lets flats, Peep show, Friday night dinner) that I just find depressing.

The usually involve some "loser" character getting hit with unfortunate circumstances over and over.

Holy shit I haven't watched Black Books in years, I absolutely loved that show. Hard disagree on the Peep Show, it's one of the greatest shows ever but I will admit I couldn't get through the first series for the longest time before it clicked and I binged the whole lot :)

> Friday night dinner

The TV execs evidently don't agree with you; Friday Night Dinner is currently on its _fourth_ attempt at an American remake. I can't imagine it working out well.

I can't watch any show set in an office. They are relatable, but not in a pleasant way.

Same but I found Parks and Recreation a welcome change

I think you're missing out the fact that it's also very, very funny indeed.

Imo the success of the US Office is that it took the cringeworthy hyper relatable observational comedy of the UK Office and made it a little more hopeful. It lost some of the shock power of original but made it far more addictive as comfort TV. It's still really funny and relatable but also slightly escapist in a way the original isn't. Thus 9 seasons vs 2 and a christmas special.

That said it's been years since I watched the original (I've watched the US one far far too many times over the pandemic) and all this chat makes me want to rewatch again.

I honestly can't remember the UK office. No faces no names no plot lines. I just finished another US office binge.

Going to get my UK passport rejected saying this haha. I definitely prefer the American underlying hope than the British underlying despair. I've already got the latter built in!

Another issue, which we tend to forget about in this age of 4K and so on, was that a lot of these shows were filmed on digital betamax or similar (and before that on analog magnetic formats). For a British show, that would typically mean 576i 50Hz PAL, and it would just not look great on most equipment when transmitted as 480i 60Hz NTSC. Some shows were filmed on film (I think this was more common in the US) and those were easier to deal with, but horrible picture quality would have been a concern.

A lot of people in the US would turn it off because "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent". The reason they get away with being on Netflix is that they don't need to be super popular to be worth it for the streaming networks if they pick it up for a cheap price.

Linear TV had a limited number of time slots and had to be very choosey with what they put on. It needed to have massive appeal in all parts of the country.

The argument is a bit undercut when a staggeringly expensive show such as House of the Dragon is the most watched show to ever debut on HBO, and features mainly UK actors and accents.

Especially when you factor in the pirating audience on top of this, it’s a massively popular show and among the most-watched in the US.

Not saying you have no point at all. Personally I have a harder time with the accents in contemporary shows aimed at UK audiences such as IT Crowd because they can at times speak faster and with more slang. But I don’t think it’s purely about disliking accents.

> "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent"

This is charitable. Probably a lot of folks here just have a general disdain for all things foreign.

I am not sure anyone has ever tried to put numbers to the distinction between the two groups.

The thing that amuses me as an Australian is the subtitles when a pom, Irish, or Scot is talking. I've not seen it with Australians, but I wouldn't be surprised

I had to read your comment twice, I first mis-read "pom" as being a badly kermed [1] "porn", which made the entire thing hard to parse.

Then I realized I wasn't sure what "pom" means (not a native speaker, and from the northern hemisphere) either, so had to look it up [2]: "(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, mildly derogatory slang) An Englishman; a Briton; a person of British descent". It's more of the rhyming slang, didn't know that was a thing for Australian slang.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keming

[2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pom#Noun

Mild derogatory slang in Australian english is not derogatory at all from the local perspective.

> Mild derogatory slang in Australian english is not derogatory at all from the local perspective.

Indeed. Derogatory would be "Pommie bastard."

And affectionate slang would be "pommie <c-word>" - or, at least, that's the impression I get as a pom! :)

As an Aussie, that c-word thing isn't really a thing in my experience, at least not in the urban environments I inhabit. (It may be a thing in the bush.)

We tend to be "direct" and generally have no fear of speaking truth to authority: the whole "OMG we can't indict the former President" issue with Trump is confusing down here: politicians and people in positions of responsibility are held to a HIGHER standard of behaviour, not lower, and they'd be the first to be tapped on the shoulder (or we expect them to be, and would be asking why they haven't been yet).

Not sure where you're from, but in my Australian suburban jungle, cunt is a pretty common term.

You don't say it if you're over at mums for lunch on a Sunday, but hanging out with the boys? For sure.

"What's with this cunt?" etc is common venacular.

Here in America they will often subtitle Asians speaking English. As someone with an Asian wife and kids I can never figure out if I should laugh or cry or both.

For those coming into this discussion late with no personal exposure to American television, the OP's use of "often" is just them burning some steam off. This is not a serious thing that happens in any kind of high percentage of content. I can't think of any content where it does happen and would be surprised if any examples created in the last 20 years could be found.

It just happened with a movie in the last year. An Asian person speaking English with a Mandarin accent was subtitled. If I could remember the name I'd link it to you. Maybe you just aren't watching content with diverse casts that speak with accents.

Convenient that you don't have any examples of your point whatsoever and just lean into a thinly veiled insult to try and cover that up. The point stands, this content is by no means ubiquitous or even remotely close to frequent enough for your use of 'often' to be correct with even a charitable interpretation.

I have seen thick southern/country accepts get subtitled on reality shows, FWIW.

I haven’t noticed many subtitles on TV in the US. But I remember watching Trainspotting with a college flat mate. He had no idea what was being said; as a Scot, I had to translate for him.

Among my friends and family, only the really thick UK accents aren’t understood very well. Glaswegian, Scouse, etc. The more common (on TV) RP, upper class Edinburg, and Highland accents are mostly fine.

Reminds me of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0m4rcx0of4

Speaking of subtitles. My god, on the UK Show DVD releases, the subtitles tracks made it a whole new show.

The subtitles made me roar with laughter when I first saw Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come. The whole movie is in Jamaican patois, so there's some logic in translating it; but most urbanites here have plenty of exposure to Jamaican patois, so it's a bit like having English subtitles on an English movie.

It's funny because that show was super popular in France, via subtitles.

Even this bit? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqnFnWSYzaQ

these damn brits!

And Netflix made it much easier to enable subtitles/captioning.

Not at all. There's a cadre of people who enjoy British television programming in America, but they don't count. I'd estimate that the number of people that have watched for example the UK office is maybe 1% or less than the people that watched the US office in the US.

You wouldn't have look very hard to find an American who has seen Downton Abbey, Doctor Who, or Bake Off. The biggest problem keeping Americans from watching UK TV is access, not some inherent dislike or disinterest in compelling television whenever British people are involved.

A show has to be wildly popular before Americans even get the chance to be exposed to it, which really limits the amount of viewers for UK programing, but that's no reason to assume that shows have to be recast and refilmed before an appreciable number of Americans will be interested in them.

If American producers want to remake shows from the UK I wish they'd do it with panel shows. It's an entertaining genre seen in many countries that just never took off in the US. At least then they'd be more justified in bringing in American talent so guests are more recognizable.

> The biggest problem keeping Americans from watching UK TV is access

I love British TV. I would happily pay for a UK television license if I could access iPlayer/Channel 4/etc from the US. I don’t get why they are so hell bent against making more money and insist on region locking content. Instead I have to resort to pirating it or buying import DVDs/BluRays.

A long time ago I used to pay for a Linux shell account on a UK provider so I could access iPlayer via a SOCKS proxy. (This was long before VPN providers were popular.). It was awesome to see the latest Top Gear or Kitchen Nightmare episode. It’s a shame we’re locked out of such wonderful content.

You should look into BritBox[0], a BBC and ITV project, available on Roku, Amazon, and probably other platforms. I have no affiliation; I was just born and raised as a child in the UK and miss the shows. It's got quite a lot.

[0] https://www.britbox.com/us/

It does, but it’s also a frustrating demonstration of the access problem. It’s mostly a cavalcade of endless police/detective/murder mystery shows. It has Red Dwarf and classic Doctor Who, but the panel show selection is spotty and they don’t bother to add new seasons in a timely fashion. It does have much of Would I Lie To You but they don’t add new episodes when they air in the UK. They seem to have given up on adding new seasons of 8 Out of 10 Cats Dows Countdown.

I can't watch Red Dwarf any more. It has aged terribly. The overacting (eg The Cat), the canned laughter to fit the TV format... I think I was just "meh" about it until I listened to the audiobook read by Chris Barrie (the actor who played Rimmer). I didn't even want to listen to it but my wife insisted that I'd love it. I did. In contrast to the TV series, the book is fresh, genuinely funny and surprisingly astute. The story is narrated by Rimmer, who is a wonderfully awful character, full of self-loathing and false confidence. I challenge anyone to listen to that audiobook without finding embarrassing parallels between themselves and Rimmer. The characters of Lister and Rimmer are more fully developed, making the TV series feel thin and pointless in contrast. I suppose it was pitched too hard at evening British TV audiences of the late 80s.

Seasons 1-6 were in front of a live audience.

Whatever. The effect is horrible. And plenty of times live audiences are worse than the ones that come out of a can. Watch the "WAT" video twice, and you'll know what I'm talking about... That one person who has to laugh fast and loud to let everybody know "I GOT THE JOKE BETTER THAN YOU DID". It gets in the way of the viewer engaging with the show.

I really dislike Britbox and NowTV since for some reason they do not support the Android TV in the UK.

> I don’t get why they are so hell bent against making more money and insist on region locking content.

Maybe it has something to do with the license being a tax vs a service charge? Seems like opening the door for anyone with an internet connection would only help fund quality programing. $160 a year isn't terrible. Maybe there are issues with distribution rights too. I'd do it too if I could, but I'm with you and I'll take what options they leave me with.

> so hell bent against making more money

They may still be making more money by regional licensing than just opening up paid streaming to the rest of the world. The support on that alone might be ... expensive.

Have any of the US talk shows started to copy Graham Norton's "all guests on the couch together" style?

For anyone unfamiliar Graham Norton hosts a late night style talk show but instead of inviting guests out one by one and talking to each in turn he brings them all out together. He still focuses in on each guest at times but he jumps between and encourages them to engage with each other like a good dinner party host. Here's an example of British comedian Greg Davies telling a story while Ryan Gosling next to him dies of laughter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuXGpUR7fXA

It essentially copies the best parts of panel shows and since he started doing that a lot of folk (most notably Jonathon Ross) have started to copy.

During Covid, a lot of atypical British stuff showed up on US network tv. Not new stuff, either; networks picked through the recent catalog to find stuff they thought would work. One example was Dead Pixels.

> If American produces want to remake shows from the UK I wish they'd do it with panel shows.

They do, but they are very bad. They just remade Would I Lie To You? recently. It was not very funny. They did a Taskmaster a few years ago. Horrific.

There was a US remake of Taskmaster, which is like 50% a panel show. It was exceedingly terrible despite keeping 1 of the 2 UK hosts, and especially compared to the excellent New Zealand and Swedish Taskmaster remakes.

I agree about access though. I've introduced a bunch of US friends to Taksmaster who devour the seasons available on youtube, but are then out of options to see the rest.

I can't find it but Alex Horne did an interview about the US remake and why it didn't work. The main reason in his opinion was that the network insisted on making it 30min (presumably 22min with ads) and that meant they had to cut out a lot of the contestant banter. The tasks themselves are funny but what really adds the humour is the interactions between the contestants, the TaskMaster and his assistant.

Maybe that decision was due to the USA's lack of panel shows?

USA "unscripted" shows are terrible. The producers think the audience is too dumb to tolerate genuine conversation, and/or they can't find any charismatic people to put on screen. Kitchen Nightmares is the canonical side-by-side example of how the USA style ruins everything.

It’s ridiculous how much money they are leaving money on the table in the US. Taskmaster (UK) has a huge following among US teenagers, at least in my area.

The CW tried licensing Taskmaster and it got abysmal ratings. They'd be better if they did same day broadcasts, but any later wouldn't be enough to replace those teenager's current watching methods.

> The CW tried licensing Taskmaster and it got abysmal ratings

While I usually like Reggie Watts' work, his persona on the show was too cerebral. Felt like someone at The CW got afraid of the word 'master' but figured they could balance it out with a nice black guy role playing a psychotherapist for the competitors.

Also Lisa Lamponelli was just 100 percent angry the entire season, as if Alex Horne was personally responsible for all childhood leukemia. As a bit gag during an obnoxious task it can work but if thats all you do it fundamentally rejects the premise.

You're discussing the US version on Comedy Central. A few years ago The CW licensed and aired the British version. It got terrible ratings and was dropped after a single episode.

I'm not sure airing a single episode is a good measure of interest. Especially if they didn't market it much. What's the point of going through the trouble to secure the rights to air something if you aren't going to give it a fair shot? I really don't get the reasoning behind these kinds of decisions. I've heard amazon cancels shows if they don't perform well enough after their first few weeks on prime.

With all the things competing for our attention, they should really give people more time to find things. I understand that they really really want to force people to watch things on their schedule, but those days are over. They've had some success with forcing people to wait week to week for new episodes, but personally I won't start a show like that until I can binge watch it.

Equally confusing was netflix canceling originals they'd already invested heavily in before the story had concluded. Shows with fans who were left pissed off. Netflix could have had a quality title in their catalogue for those who like it instead of bait for new generations of pissed off fans.

> I'm not sure airing a single episode is a good measure of interest.

It's probably not in most cases.

How many decades have we heard of shows that were about to be axed because of poor ratings or apparent disinterest, then... somehow they turned out to be megashows? Even something as simple as changing the day it was aired often could make or break a show.

> personally I won't start a show like that until I can binge watch it.

Rewatching some older shows (frasier, right now), my wife and I notice some things that... just weren't an issue 30 years ago. "We just saw this story line last week!" Well... no, it was from 2 seasons earlier, which translated to 2 years earlier back in the 90s. But binging things back to back that were produced for annual serialization ... it's not how they were intended to be consumed.

Are 'shows' now being produced with the knowledge they'll all be watched within a couple of days, not dramatically played out over weeks/months? Will 'cliffhangers' continue to be a thing to get you to 'tune in next time!'?

> Are 'shows' now being produced with the knowledge they'll all be watched within a couple of days, not dramatically played out over weeks/months?

I think so. They'd have to have been aware of the risk once it was common for TV shows to be released on DVD and anything developed for streaming services should expect it too. It seems like shows really stepped up their continuity game after internet fandoms started pointing out all their mistakes.

Shows do still have cliffhangers, but that crutch isn't leaned on as often outside of season finales. I doubt we'll get many shows that always end on them these days.

Teenagers?! Hell, I'm 41 and I love the UK Taskmaster. It's pretty popular in my late-30s/early-40s American friend group.

They have options, now - Taskmaster had its own streaming service, which is a weird flex. I love the show but skipped it because it's not worth $50 for temporary access to, though I'd gladly pay $25 for a "perpetual" license.

Comedy is too fractured in the US for panel shows to really work IMO. I think a big part of why panel shows work so well in the UK is you have a lot of camaraderie and familiarity with the relatively smaller and more tightly knit group of UK comedians (it doesn't take long at all watching panel shows to start seeing familiar faces), which definitely helps keep banter running smoothly.

The Daily Show did well.

The UK panel show that I can't miss is Have I Got News For You. It's a weekly 30min news review, by very quick-witted comics. As a review of UK news, it obviously wouldn't travel; and the two (permanent) team captains are very English, and likely unknown in the USA. But there's clearly a market for that kind of satirical news review.

They skate close to the libel laws; Ian Hislop, one of the two team captains, is the editor of Private Eye, a satirical print weekly that has a long history of defending (and losing) libel actions. "Did I just say something libellous? Never mind, they'll cut it before transmission".

How can you not mention Charlie Brooker's Wipe, which ultimately led to Black Mirror.

Last Week Tonight is kind of valuable, but flawed (unfunny off-topic humor, dishonest in its propagandizing for good causes), but most importantly, John Oliver's Activism Hour stole the name of what should be a very different show.

I feel the same way about the show's flaws, but i do still find it informative enough that's worthwhile to watch. You really do have to watch out for the bias though. I can't remember offhand if I've ever caught them outright lying about anything, but they are very selective in what they present and how which means they'll often leave out very important information and context.

> but they are very selective in what they present and how which means they'll often leave out very important information and context.

part of what i've found with something like that is... I've already heard the other context or 'important information'. Something like LWT is a balancing factor, not the primary source of info in the first place (well, for me anyway).

> I wish they'd do it with panel shows

My guess is that Poms value wit, and the majority of Americans don’t (in my experience). Within most any social class in the UK, wit is recognised: watching say a street cleaner make a sublimey witty comment is comedic fools gold. Also the British colony owerlords relentlessly take the piss out of themselves, maybe just so the French can’t beat them, oooo errr.

Meanwhile us colony exploiters would like to be able to give the BBC money so we can enjoy their terrible programmeing. But those anti-capitalist-royalist-uneuropean-twats won’t accept our livres for their crooked tooth pictures.

Disclaimer: if English were a race, I’d lose.

Downton Abbey in particular was _designed_ for export (and I'm pretty sure is more popular in the US than the UK). If it was designed purely for a domestic market, it would probably have been a lot less... naive?

The creators of Downtown have a conservative agenda.

But is that 1% number higher now (e.g shows like Bridgerton or the Crown) because of Netflix and other OTT platforms?

The Office is a bad example in this context though, because it's the one show where the US version was (arguably) an improvement over the UK version, and way more popular than the UK version even outside of the US.

if there's an exception that proves this rule, it's gotta be top gear. I know plenty who have watched every episode with the Clarkson gang and not sat through a whole episode of the American port.

How many people watched House of the Dragon in the US?

I wonder if it really just comes down to chopping it up for ads.

As in, the cost of reshooting is less than the cost of syndicating the original and re-cutting it for American ad time slots.

From my childhood, the only place I remember seeing unedited British shows was on my local PBS affiliate which doesn’t show ads (maybe once every hour).

That kind of thinking still exists. The most recent example I can think of is Ghosts on CBS as the US version of the UK Ghosts. CBS' streaming service (Paramount+) will even recommend the UK original and you can compare them side-by-side.

(Another somewhat recent example to mind was FX's Wilfred as the US version of the Australian Wilfred TV show. Hulu picked up the Australian show so that you could compare them side-by-side. For streamers this is easy content recommendations.)

TV and Movie executives are always looking for "low risks" and "proven formula" will always be a way to lower risk. Shows and movies from the same originating country get "rebooted" all the time. Doing a fresh take across cultural boundaries is interestingly a higher risk as studios try to figure out if the original premise has legs in the new country. Some of what we see is survivorship bias: The US Office was huge so that gets mentioned a lot. But there were a lot of similar attempts that never made it past the pilot because the risks were too high or it just didn't seem to work or whatever.

Off the top of my head, similar to this US IT Crowd pilot there are also "lost" pilots you can find for US Doctor Who and US Red Dwarf. The fascinating thing about both of those attempts occurred during different points of the height of the PBS/BBC partnership. Up until about the late 90s/early 00s PBS was the most common importer of BBC programming from the UK. (That shifted when the BBC decided it could be a stronger revenue stream, starting chasing bigger bids from US cable channels, and then eventually cofounded the BBC America cable channel.) At various points in time PBS' biggest audiences tuned into Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, and Blake's 7 (among others on the sci-fi side of their programming), so even in the "old" TV era these US attempts knew there was some pre-existing audience familiar with the original UK shows through PBS at the time. So streamers have exactly created that as a "new" idea or new thinking so much as shifted the economics of it. (PBS was public funded and not making a lot of money for how popular its showing of UK shows were. Streamers are all big for-profits that use multi-cultural content for moats around their subscription fees. Including BBC America's current home AMC+.)

>like they did the US Office.

The UK and US The Office are both great shows in their own right. But they aren't very similar, outside of the setting.

The first episode of the US office is pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the first episode of the UK office. After that they diverged a fair bit.

no, they've changed quite a bit, only the first scene is sticking somewhat with the original version. 5 minutes in at least half the dialog has been rewritten. and all the changes are for the worst.

I watched the scene where they first introduce the IT guys and was disappointed to see they cut the finger-licking for some reason.

They completely undermined the first establishment of "have you tried turning it off an on again?"

The line doesn't land half as well without the entire 45 seconds (no exaggeration, I counted on the seek bar) of Roy licking his fingers and drinking tea while the phone rings first.

The pacing and joke delivery is completely shattered.

It has been quite popular in my circles, but then I have a disproportionate concentration of British-empire immigrants and IT folks in my circles, so... Maybe?

Yes, at least in my circles. Most people I know have watched it and like it. My old boss used to have "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" as his ringtone, which got annoying after about a month. Still a good show though

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944954/

Doesn't name the producer responsible, but "someone" is someone in Hollywood, probably at NBC.

The UK show has like 6 episodes in a season, while an American show needs at least 22.

That's almost completely a relic nowadays though. Most things worth watching are on streaming, which has pretty much completely abandoned the 22 episode format and 6-10 seems to be where things have settled.

It's bizarre. Sometimes I pop into a streaming service and see a show from 5-10 years ago, originally syndicated from a TV channel, and it's not bad, but it's just... An OK idea drawn out until it's boring. OTOH we have these MCU shows now, barely (if at all) longer than a movie, but chopped into 6x20min episodes that give it a bumpy pacing and flow, and over before anything happens.

That seems to be changing, though, for many popular (expensive?) shows. Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, all the recently-new Star Trek series, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, The Orville... They all have seasons in the ballpark of 10 episodes.

With the exception of The Orville, none of these were ever network shows, and only The Expanse aired on basic cable, which does often have ~13 episodes.

IT Crowd USA was supposed to be a primetime NBC sitcom.

The main reason would be the number of episodes. The UK series is very short which is typical. US shows try to stay on for as long as possible to maximize profits. That's exactly what they've done with The Office.

> The UK series is very short which is typical.

Indeed, there were 4 series each of 6 episodes, plus one special, so only 25 shows in total.

IIRC in one of the series extras this is talked about: because a series is just 6 episodes, producers are willing to give a wider range of ideas a chance, and if they do well, a second season (of six more episodes) isn't a big stretch. Notably there wasn't a fifth season because they all felt the concept had gone as far as it need to: they didn't want to "jump the shark".

They did the same with "Coupling", a funny UK sitcom that was actually unbearable to watch in its US format. Something about the the jokes just doesn't translate 1:1 to American actors or whatever...

It's kind of silly, as Coupling was clearly the UK's attempt at Friends.

Maybe that's why it did not make it past pilot. Why reshoot if it's going to be so similar?

That was the style at the time. There were a handful of shows that came over to the US from the UK - The Office, Coupling, IT Crowd - but only The Office took off, and really only took off once it found it's own voice for American audiences. In many cases, they were shoot-for-shoot remakes with American actors and some modifications (Jim instead of Tim, Pam instead of Dawn), but this one is down to the credits identical, even bringing Moss over.

I think there is room for British comedies in the US, as long as they're open to adaptation. David Brent was a terrible boss and awful person, but Michael Scott had to at least be a good salesman to be believable as middle management. Little differences like that made the show work.

I think they probably realized that the success of the series were due to the characters, and not so much the writing. So if its going to live/die based on the audiences response to the characters then why spend time working on the script?

And I have to say, this episode of the US IT Crowd just wasn't the same for me. This version is quirky and forgettable. The cast of the UK version is _so_ good that it elevates it to a hilarious classic.

There are lots of other examples too; see the awful red dwarf US pilot with jane leeves as holly

It's exactly the same script.

Some parts are different. One thing that put me off was that the boss wasn't an insane lunatic that did random things. The boss is the US version was a more collected, planning and evil character.

Like the scene where he called back after firing an entire department to say "I was just keeping the IT-department in line", suggesting that he knew what they where up to all along.

The UK boss wouldn't do that. He would keep doing things that only made sense to his insane brain, until something went down hill enough that he just jumped out of a window in the middle of a meeting.

That single unnecessary addition after the "team" scene completely diffused Reynholm's character, I don't understand why they would do that. I guess they're going for the evil boss kind of thing but it doesn't seem to fit the format at all.

I think this remake could've gone well if they changed up the script a bit and maybe alter the characters some more. Except for the views and some change of wording, this felt like a fan remake featuring Richard Ayoade more than it felt like a serious attempt to get the show to America.

> until something went down hill enough that he just jumped out of a window

Irregularities in the pension fund.

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