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what is with all the remakes and co-productions on US cable?

W

wamdue

Admiral
Admiral
Ive noticed that alot of British shows are being remade on US cable

MTV - Skins & The Inbetweeners
Syfy - Being Human
Showtime - Shameless
FX - Wilfred (remake of Aussie show)

recently HBO made a Little Britain USA

For all the pilots networks gave to UK shows, very few got a fully series, yet US cable is probaly giong to take all of these to series.

As for co-productions

Showtime & the BBC teaming up for Episodes, whilst ABC, HBO, and BBC are all co-funding Angry Boys from Chris Lilley.

BBC & Starz teaming for Torchwood, an I think I read something about them making a US version of Underbelly as well.

ok so the co-productions are not that much of a big deal, but I thought US cable was meant to be more creative than this.

What is next for cable, a US remake of Law & Order: London? or will MTV and SyFy battle it out to remake Misfits.
 
To be fair, these shows make up about 1% of the cable television market. They just have lots of program hours to fill and many aren't at all creative.
 
Basically it comes down to the entertainment industry being really conservative. They don't want to spend money on something really expensive in case it fails, which means they'll lose tons of money, and co-producing stuff means that they'll have smaller losses than they would if they just did it by themselves.
 
This is just history repeating itself--except more on cable these days. U.S. television networks have done this before (All In the Family and Three's Company were Americanized remakes of British sitcoms, IIRC). And co-productions aren't new either.
 
^That's right. Lots of US shows over the decades have been adapted from British shows. And some British shows have been adapted from US or other shows, including current programming like Law & Order: UK.
 
C.E. Evans said:
This is just history repeating itself--except more on cable these days. U.S. television networks have done this before (All In the Family and Three's Company were Americanized remakes of British sitcoms, IIRC). And co-productions aren't new either.
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As was Stepford & Son, to name one of the most success British-to-American remakes . . ..
 
^I assume you mean Steptoe and Son, which was remade as Sanford and Son. (I suppose Stepford and Son would be a show about a lower-class junkman and his perfect robot wife raising a kid...?)

As for co-productions, they're common these days as a way of spreading out the expense of a show.
 
Greg Cox said:
C.E. Evans said:
This is just history repeating itself--except more on cable these days. U.S. television networks have done this before (All In the Family and Three's Company were Americanized remakes of British sitcoms, IIRC). And co-productions aren't new either.
Click to expand...

As was Stepford & Son, to name one of the most success British-to-American remakes . . ..
Click to expand...
Steptoe (British)and Sandford. (American) :)
 
Christopher said:
^I assume you mean Steptoe and Son, which was remade as Sanford and Son. (I suppose Stepford and Son would be a show about a lower-class junkman and his perfect robot wife raising a kid...?)

As for co-productions, they're common these days as a way of spreading out the expense of a show.
Click to expand...


Oops!

Although that robot wife show sounds like a winner! :)
 
bullethead said:
Basically it comes down to the entertainment industry being really conservative. They don't want to spend money on something really expensive in case it fails, which means they'll lose tons of money, and co-producing stuff means that they'll have smaller losses than they would if they just did it by themselves.
Click to expand...
that does of course speak for co-productions, but in terms of remakes, its not that safe, network TV despite the flood of pilots based on UK shows, few have made it to air, and most of them have flopped. This is more true in terms of drama and comedy, whilst shows like Wife Swap and Supernanny have done well for ABC.
 
As far as Canada goes, we remake a lot of reality shows for our own audiences, be it an American reality show or a British reality show, like Canada's Next Top Model. We tend to borrow a lot, and it's rare that a Canadian show is ever remade, but recently there has been an American version of Canada's Worst Driver, and a remake of Being Erica is in the works for the UK market.
 
US public television (mainly WGBH Boston) has co-produced w/ BBC and ITV for decades, to produce some awesome shows. Sharing expenses allows for higher budgets than either entity could normally afford alone. It's as simple as that.
 
Jinglebell JaRock said:
To be fair, these shows make up about 1% of the cable television market. They just have lots of program hours to fill and many aren't at all creative.
Click to expand...

Yep. You might as well complain about all the remakes of American shows, all the cop shows (there aren't enough already!?!?) and all the cookie-cutter sitcoms. Let's see someone line up EVERY new show in development and do an analysis by type. That should take you till next summer. :rommie: And since most of them will never see the light of day, it would be an even bigger waste of time than it appears.

The sheer volume of American TV requires a constant stream of fodder. The irony is that, because TV honchos are terrified of losing their job by taking big risks that flop, the fodder tends to come from a very narrow band of "acceptable" ideas, one of which is "ideas that someone else has tried out." (That's the same thinking that is giving us remakes of Charlie's Angels and The Munsters.) It's a chickenshit way of reducing risk, or thinking that you're reducing risk, because TV is extremely risk-adverse.

But every so often, there are counterexamples that show what a stupid attitude that is. If AMC hadn't been willing to take a big risk, we wouldn't have The Walking Dead. Lost was a huge risk for ABC. No risk = no breakout hits.
in terms of remakes, its not that safe, network TV despite the flood of pilots based on UK shows, few have made it to air,
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That's hardly surprising. Most shows in development don't make it to the air, and most that do, flop. That's why there needs to be that constant Niagra Falls-type volume of new fodder.

And yeah, I don't think foreign remakes have any better track record than average. TV honchos are opting for the illusion of safety rather than reality.
 
wamdue said:
what is with all the remakes and co-productions on US cable?
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This may change in the future, but I think there is a simple answer for why it's happened this way in the past: American networks need more episodes per year than British productions will be able to provide.

So, for a long time, American networks remade the programs rather than just porting them over. How many American shows have you seen on the major networks in the UK? Quite a few I'd imagine. I've seen a lot of American-made programming based on UK originals, but I can't think of more than one or two originals.

Cable may be able to get away with changing this, as they're working with shorter seasons (much more like a UK series than a US season) so we'll see. As it is, I've gotten to see Doctor Who, Torchwood, (very little of) Secret Diaries of a London Call Girl on cable recently. It's a step in the right direction.

In the end though, America has long been disinterested in foreign culture, so it's not too surprising that TV execs concerned with the bottom-line would try to tailor these shows to an American audience that doesn't like listening to people with "funny accents".

ETA: Sorry this post is a bit hard to read, the thoughts seemed clearer in my head.
 
As far as I know, MERLIN was the first British show to run on a major American network in decades--and that was only a brief summertime experiment.

(I guess even NBC execs thought it would be silly to refilm a show about Camelot with American actors!)
 
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