US to UK transplant shows?

November 14, 2007 9:45 AM

Has there ever been an American TV Show that was remade in the UK (or anywhere else for that matter)

I've been thinking about this for a while - it seems that the US has a long history of re-imaging UK TV for broadcast in the states - everything from All in the Family/Til Death Do Us Part and Three's Company/Man About the House to more current shows like Coupling US UK, The Office, and (maybe or maybe not coming soon) the IT Crowd UK US.

So - it got me to thinking, has there ever been a situation where a US show was remade for UK or other audiences? It seems as though the Beeb just imports the series whole hog (friends comes to mind) instead of trying to re-do them...

posted by niteHawk to Media & Arts (22 answers total)

Project Catwalk is the UK version of the US show Project Runway.
posted by amro at 9:50 AM on November 14, 2007

Seasme Street

http://www.sesameworkshop.org/international/portal.php
posted by sandra_s at 9:50 AM on November 14, 2007

That 70's Show was remade as Days Like These. It was supposedly pretty bad.
posted by Cuppatea at 9:51 AM on November 14, 2007

I love Wikipedia. List of U.S. television series remade for the British market.
posted by amro at 9:54 AM on November 14, 2007

Perfect Strangers was remade in Russia.
posted by Sara Anne at 9:55 AM on November 14, 2007

Brighton Belles was a remake of The Golden Girls / Golden Palace.

It was horrible television.

The Beeb also ripped off wholesale The Daily Show as The Late Edition. Channel 4 also did its own unofficial version of TDS in the late 1990s, calling it The 11 O'Clock Show. Obviously no-one from the original American production was involved in either of these but it's clear where the inspiration comes from.
posted by tapeguy at 9:55 AM on November 14, 2007

America's Next Top Model spawned several spinoffs, including UK and AUS versions.
posted by iconomy at 9:56 AM on November 14, 2007

And Sky is currently running Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old?, a direct remake of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?.
posted by tapeguy at 9:58 AM on November 14, 2007

Not even heard of half of those on the Wikipedia page, but I'd say the really famous / best known ones are.. The Apprentice, The Price is Right, and Play Your Cards Right. Other than The Apprentice, which beats the US version into a bloody pulp, the US versions of the shows are all better.
posted by wackybrit at 10:05 AM on November 14, 2007

We usually just get the US version, we seem to be able to handle it.
posted by fire&wings at 10:06 AM on November 14, 2007

Who's the Boss? was remade as The Upper Hand in the early '90s. I'm pretty certain that at least some of the episodes used the exact same scripts, with minor incidental changes.
posted by macdara at 10:08 AM on November 14, 2007

Also, Days Like These was a total flop because the '70s in America were far more interesting than three-day-week, glam rock Britain. That and it was just executed really, really badly.
posted by macdara at 10:10 AM on November 14, 2007

Sheesh - I googled, but didn't think to look in Wiki...

Although looking at that list, I need to find copies of the remakes of Married with Children and That 70s show - seems like they would be interesting to say the least
posted by niteHawk at 10:18 AM on November 14, 2007

Sesame Street

Now, this is an interesting one, because a conversation about Fraggle Rock that descended into confusion -- 'Lighthouse? What lighthouse?' -- sent me to Wikipedia, where I found out that the live-action scenes were different for each country. (And The Muppet Show was a British production with American-voiced players with an eye on the US market.)

Anyway, the biggest, unknown buy-in has been classic quiz/gameshow formats: like Heinz tomato ketchup, it's not easy to imagine Blankety Blank being American in origin.
posted by holgate at 10:51 AM on November 14, 2007

There was a misbegotten attempt to remake Seinfeld in Pakistan, of all places, several years ago. It was reported on cable news in the U.S. as a "news of the weird" type story. No follow-up on how it turned out. Don't remember if they had a Babu character.
posted by gimonca at 11:54 AM on November 14, 2007

I once saw a Russian adaptation of that dreadful Fran Drescher show "The Nanny" and soon discovered that Fran must be a lot smarter than she lets on. According to Wiki, there are at least 10 foreign versions throughout the world, where they take the original scripts and make local modifications.

I imagine she's raking in quite a bit of money.
posted by RavinDave at 12:23 PM on November 14, 2007

There were two different adaptations of the Nanny in Mexico. In the first one, the nanny was a man. I think the second one is a copy of the original.

Family Feud was remade as "100 Mexicans said".
posted by clearlydemon at 1:59 PM on November 14, 2007

I once saw a Russian adaptation of that dreadful Fran Drescher show "The Nanny" and soon discovered that Fran must be a lot smarter than she lets on. According to Wiki, there are at least 10 foreign versions throughout the world, where they take the original scripts and make local modifications.

I imagine she's raking in quite a bit of money.

I wouldn't be so sure about making money from Russia. I once heard an interview with one of the creators of Thank God You're Here, and he said while they received royalties from around the world, they never saw a cent out of Russia (and were too afraid to ask).
posted by Neale at 2:21 PM on November 14, 2007

The Biggest Loser (UK)
The Amazing Race Asia

Also, in a nice twist, Ugly Betty — itself a remake of the Colombian telenovela Yo so Betty, la fea — just might become the basis for an Arabic-language version to be filmed in Dubai.
posted by rob511 at 5:53 PM on November 14, 2007

above s/b "Yo soy Betty, la fea"...
posted by rob511 at 8:52 PM on November 14, 2007

I noticed that Clifford's Puppy Days was dubbed with British accents on one of my last trips.
posted by brujita at 10:13 PM on November 14, 2007

New York Times article on the popularity of 80s sitcoms in Russia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/10/world/europe/10sitcom.html
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:05 AM on November 15, 2007