Did the Brits Dislike Bionic Woman as Much as the Americans?

[Ro_Laren]

I was posting about Michelle Ryan on the Doctor Who section of this board and a discussion arose about her performance on Bionic Woman. Most Americans have made Michelle the scapegoat for the failure of Bionic Woman. They say her acting was bad, her accent was too, her eyes were too blue, her hair was too black, etc... Did the Brits dislike Bionic Woman/Michelle Ryan's performance on Bionic Woman as much as the Americans? Would the show have done better if everything was the same, but it aired on say BBC vs. NBC?

 

[wamdue]

not sure, it was on ITV 2 so I didnt watch it

 

[Hermiod]

not sure, it was on ITV 2 so I didnt watch it

You just summed up the vast majority of ITV2's output.

The only person I know who watched it was a fellow Battlestar Galactica fan at work who only watched it because Katee Sackhoff was in it. She said it was pretty bad and was amused by the fact that her imported Region 1 nuBSG season three DVDs had a $3 off voucher for the Bionic Woman DVDs.

 

[wamdue]

not sure, it was on ITV 2 so I didnt watch it

You just summed up the vast majority of ITV2's output.

im starting to feel taking pot shots at ITV is beneath me, its far to easy

 

[Christopher]

I was posting about Michelle Ryan on the Doctor Who section of this board and a discussion arose about her performance on Bionic Woman. Most Americans have made Michelle the scapegoat for the failure of Bionic Woman. They say her acting was bad, her accent was too, her eyes were too blue, her hair was too black, etc...

Now, that's unfair. I didn't like Michelle Ryan at all -- I found her very off-putting on several levels -- but she's far from the only reason why the show failed. It wouldn't have been a good show with a different actress in the lead. It was too dark, most of the characters were too unlikeable, and thanks to constant network meddling it had a revolving-door staff that was retooling it on almost a weekly basis.

It's also not cool that Kenneth Johnson received no credit for his creation of the character Jaime Sommers. Although this character had nothing in common with the original Jaime Sommers besides the name. They really should've given her and the show different names, because there was no real connection to the original show at all. But since they did use the character name, then Johnson should've gotten credit.

 

[Icemizer]

This show was just bad on every level. Poorly thought out from the beginning and then just kept detting worse. I dont think it was to dark. It was just to "nothing".

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It wouldn't have been a good show with a different actress in the lead.

True. I remember some detailed discussions about why it failed. My take on it is that it failed for the reason (one of the reasons) why Dexter succeeds. Bionic Woman tried to turn the main character into a weepy victim that we are supposed to boo-hoo over. Now it's okay for a character to be beset by troubles, but don't make them a victim in a cheap bid for our sympathy. It generates contempt not identification.

Dexter otoh has a lead character who has been so severely damaged through no fault of his own that he cannot function as a normal human being. Yet the way the story is presented, we are not being manipulated or even encouraged to see him as a victim. Just the opposite. We know on some level he is a victim, but we come to that as our own conclusion, not because we were herded like cattle into a pen.

If they'd presented the show in a less manipulative fashion and cast Katee Sackhoff as the lead, that could very well have worked.

Also they made the idiotic mistake of trying to pass off Vancouver as San Francisco! Seattle, okay. San Francisco? Ridiculous! The only place that looks like San Francisco is San Francisco. If you can't afford to shoot here, set your show someplace more generic looking.

 

[StarTrek1701]

The New Bionic Woman was insulting and too dark to what could have been a great show. Making Jamie Sommers a stupid bartender and not a fighter pilot? The original show had more balls than this one did!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Jamie should have been wowed by having these cool new abilities. Sure it sucks that she's lost several body parts, but the new ones are superior to the old. Is it really so terrible?

I would have played it like this: at first she's not mopey but the opposite - absolutely giddy and unrealistically enthusiastic about being bionic. But this emerges as partly just her trying to repress the trauma of what's happened to her and it sets in later (maybe when she overreaches and is brought back down to earth). That way when the boo hoo part sets in, we already like Jamie and sympathize with her.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I can't even stand Lindsey Wagner's mattress commercials.

 

[Christopher]

Also they made the idiotic mistake of trying to pass off Vancouver as San Francisco! Seattle, okay. San Francisco? Ridiculous! The only place that looks like San Francisco is San Francisco. If you can't afford to shoot here, set your show someplace more generic looking.

Well, it's better than trying to pass off Los Angeles as San Francisco, as Charmed generally did. At least Vancouver has a similar climate. Other shows have used Vancouver for San Francisco, notably the first two seasons of Sliders.

The New Bionic Woman was insulting and too dark to what could have been a great show. Making Jamie Sommers a stupid bartender and not a fighter pilot? The original show had more balls than this one did!

Err, what? The original Jaime was a tennis pro turned schoolteacher.

 

[Ro_Laren]

I can't even stand Lindsey Wagner's mattress commercials.

Those drive me nuts too!!

 

[BenRoethig]

This show was just bad on every level.

Except for one very good looking english actress.

 

[captcalhoun]

i watched it. MR was about the only decent thing in it.

 

[Christopher]

This show was just bad on every level.

Except for one very good looking english actress.

No, the English actress wasn't very good-looking and she was hardly an exception to the show's negative qualities. On the other hand, the American actress playing her sister was devastatingly gorgeous.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

This show was just bad on every level.

Except for one very good looking english actress.

No, the English actress wasn't very good-looking and she was hardly an exception to the show's negative qualities. On the other hand, the American actress playing her sister was devastatingly gorgeous.

Not to take sides here, or anything, but I don't even remember what the sister looked like. So I wouldn't she made much of an impression.
Either way the show was fairly meh, could have been good but was poorly executed.

 

[hyzmarca]

Michelle Ryan is a good actress, but she was miscast and misdirected in Bionic Woman. If she has been able to use her natural accent, the show would have been slightly better. But it still would have sucked.

The crew turnover and constant revamping was the real problem, they never could find a groove. The show was like a chicken running around with it's head cut off; it went in different directions depending on who was in charge at the moment but there wasn't any sort of destination.

What Bionic Woman really needed was focus, and a full 13 or 22 episode order before anything was written, not interrupted by a strike.

 

[captcalhoun]

This show was just bad on every level.

Except for one very good looking english actress.

No, the English actress wasn't very good-looking and she was hardly an exception to the show's negative qualities. On the other hand, the American actress playing her sister was devastatingly gorgeous.

OMG! you're so wrong i can't even begin to articulate how wrong you are. but you're made of wrong.

 

[DontFeedPhil]

The show was poorly written and badly acted and wasnt even as good as Flash "ah-ah" Godron on the SyFy channel. It was about as good as Knight Rider...Thats how bad it was...

 

[diankra]

To get back to the OP's question, it didn't really get much attention in Britain once it actually ran.
There was a flurry of tabloid interest when Michelle Ryan was cast, and when ITV bought it, but it had already been cancelled by the time ITV actually started showing it (British stations often hold back American shows until January, so there's enough of a stockpile of episodes to be able to run them without weeks off).
So it was burnt off on the digital channel ITV2, without the profile-boosting repeats or first screenings on the main channel ITV1 that other imports got - for instance, Dexter runs on ITV1 on Thursday, with ITV4 repeats on Friday and Monday, Supernatural (ITV2 twice a week, with an ITV1 showing to come later in the year with season two repeating on Tuesdays in the meantime) or Pushing Daisies (ITV1 only this year, but it also got ITV2 repeats last year).

As benchmark figures, a decent rating on one of the five terrestrial channels is maybe 5 to 7 million (on BBC1 or ITV at least - BBC2, Channel Four and Five are a bit lower), whereas anything over 500,000 on a digital channel is a major success. And I don't think Bionic Woman was exactly a success for them...