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Comment by mikeryan | Hacker News Reader

According to Kevin Spacey, Netflix was the only buyer that didn't want "House of Cards" to do a pilot, which, when you think of it, would have been an immense waste of time, talent and money.

I agree with most of Kevin's Spacey's comments but this one was a huge gamble for Netflix. I think pilots in the digital realm will be the media version of an MVP and seed financing before an A round.

Also define "immense" waste, a Pilot is an episode you're making anyway. There's some added expense from ramping production up and down temporarily but its no where near as bad as making 13 episodes where the last 7 or 8 aren't useable.

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Wasn't the original House of Cards rather successful, thus reducing the possibility that the US remake would be terrible?

The IT Crowd is a successful show in the UK but the pilot for the US version was garbage, ruining almost every joke from the original. Even though having a successful predecessor helps a show somewhat, there is still a lot of room for error.

Except "House of Cards" was a political soaper (west wing) with a charismatic anti-hero (the shield, etc.)

"The IT crowd" as a goofy farce had no American counterpart and was pretty much doomed to failure. Better translation examples would be the American "The Office" (based on other office-based comedies) and the American "Coupling" (a "Friends" clone.) "Coupling" failed because the first American episode was nearly a shot-for-shot remake. You might have been able to get away with that in the 90s, but not in the Netflix/Bittorrent era.

Actually, the bigger reason (as I understand it) that Coupling failed in the US had more to do with American network TV not being at all comfortable with the content of Coupling. The humor was generally "neutered" for American TV and the resulting product was so watered down it was doomed to fail.

Not to mention that the casting was atrocious.

That's not always the case, take a look at The IT Crowd.

Skins and Coupling were also big hits in the UK, but their US versions flopped.

> reducing the possibility

I was going to disagree because some U.S. remakes of British shows have not been as good or have been terrible, but in-general tried and true products in a market in one country have a better chance of succeeding in another country in similar form. This generalization pretty much carries over into most products and services.

Something else that would be interesting would be to show the # record/CD/mp3 sales of cover songs of successful original vs. originals by the same band doing the cover.

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