• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Foreign remakes of American shows?

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I saw the British remake of The Office. It wasn't very good, and apparently had to be canceled after 8 episodes, unlike the American series which had some legs.
Have you seen the remake of Sanford and son? - they whitewashed the two leads, its a total travesty.
 

Manu

Member
In Argentina we had remakes of The Nanny

21.jpg


and Married With Children

original.jpg


same lead actress on both shows, yeah.

The same network also had a show years before called Verano del 98, which actually started as a ripoff of Dawson's Creek, and it was only when Sony threatened with suing the network that they changed the story.

Sin+t%C3%ADtulo-1.jpg
 
UK Apprentice is the superior version.
I remember Trump arguing with Lord Sugar about it on twitter, his only good thing and someone else did it better.
 
Not really a US show originally, but UK, but there was Stromberg, a German adaptation of The Office.

LPvvWrH.jpg


wIjSJlQ.jpg


Well, I say adaptation but it wasn't officially licensed at first, so it was more of a ripoff. The creators of The Office had to sue the guys behind Stromberg for them to admit "Yeah okay, maybe this show wasn't really our idea."

It's a bit of a shame, because as far as german adaptations go it's one of the better ones. It doesn't reach the highs the original UK version does and it goes on for a bit too long in the end, but it's better than the US adaption imo.
 

Fliesen

Member
there was a german remake of the IT crowd


Called, "Das iTeam, die Jungs an der Maus" -
(translated to "The iTeam, the boys with the mouse" - mouse being a lame pun, since it's both the PC mouse, but also a word used for an attractive girl. the english equivalent would be 'chick' i guess)

It was a shot-for-shot remake which was so incredibly unfunny - it was canceled after one episode.
 
I saw the British remake of The Office. It wasn't very good, and apparently had to be canceled after 8 episodes, unlike the American series which had some legs.

For real tho isn't the British version of The Office a hugely influential thing?

Was that mock-doc style really a thing before it?

Also I kind of want to see foreign adaptations of 'The Thick of It' now.
 
there was a german remake of the IT crowd



Called, "Das iTeam, die Jungs an der Maus" -
(translated to "The iTeam, the boys with the mouse" - mouse being a lame pun, since it's both the PC mouse, but also a word used for an attractive girl. the english equivalent would be 'chick' i guess)

It was a shot-for-shot remake which was so incredibly unfunny - it was canceled after one episode.

The american remake was shot for shot as well wasnt it? And I think the guy with the bushy hair was in it also.

Surreal British-Irish humour just doesn't travel well. Like Guinness I suppose.
 

tolkir

Member
Spain had a remake of Cheers in 2011. Yep, 2011.

cheers-2.jpg


Of course, it was one of the biggest bomba on Spanish TV.
The Golden Girls also had remake in 2010. Bomba again.

Saturday Night Live was other fail we had.
 

amanset

Member
Sweden has a remake of The Office too. I've never actually seen it, but the show it originated as a spin off from, "Solsidan", is pretty funny.

fb1024_kontoret2.jpg


"Kontoret" literally means "The Office".
 

NekoFever

Member
For real tho isn't the British version of The Office a hugely influential thing?

Was that mock-doc style really a thing before it?

Also I kind of want to see foreign adaptations of 'The Thick of It' now.

Mockumentaries have a long history. This is Spinal Tap is an obvious one, but there are a lot on both TV and film.

But I'd agree that The Office was very influential. It was styled like the fly-on-the-wall documentaries that were extremely widespread in the late 90s/early 2000s. Tons of countries did their own versions too.
 

Mindwipe

Member
There's an Impractical Jokers UK that I hear is terrible.

Technically the US version is a remake of the UK one - it was one of eight comedy pilots BBC Three did a few years ago. But yes, it was crap (much worse than the US one).

Quite often depending on the country, Russia has:
Everybody loves Raymond
330px-voroniny_20110403190207.jpg

Married ... with Children:
%D0%9B%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BF_%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B0_%D0%A1%D1%87%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%B8%D0%B2%D1%8B_%D0%B2%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B5.jpg


I think Everybody loves Raymondhas a few other localisations as well

Like fifteen. The Russian version of Everybody Loves Raymond is a huge show there.

My old scriptwriting lecturer at university was the lead writer of the British remake of Who's The Boss, which was pretty long running over here at the time.

The Office mockudrama style was very heavily influenced by People Like Us, which was pretty genre defining, but nobody talks about it because the lead writer turned out to be a paedo.
 

JS3DX

Member
"Casado con hijos", the chilean version of "Married with Children"

91xjJCR.jpg


It apparently had a good following , and still have some re-runs now and then.
 
I wonder if there’s like foreign remakes of superhero tv shows like Smallville or Arrow but they can’t use the DC comic/ any comic characters at all.
 

KAOz

Short bus special
Sweden has a remake of The Office too. I've never actually seen it, but the show it originated as a spin off from, "Solsidan", is pretty funny.

fb1024_kontoret2.jpg


"Kontoret" literally means "The Office".

Don't forget Rena Rama Rolf which was a 90s remake of The Honeymooners.
Think 4 För 3 and Albert & Herbert where remakes aswell.
 

amanset

Member
The Office mockudrama style was very heavily influenced by People Like Us, which was pretty genre defining, but nobody talks about it because the lead writer turned out to be a paedo.

I think you mean the star, Chris Langham. Even then, The Thick of It has been mentioned in this very thread and was the basis of Veep, and he was arguably the lead until the paedo thing went down.
 
Law and Order UK was pretty good, although the stories seemed to be adapted from the original American versions and that often didn't make much sense in the context of a quite distinct culture and different police and criminal law systems. It's good drama, well produced, with an impressive cast.

My Family looks like a fairly unimaginative copy of something American. It's about a horrible dentist, his horrible family and his horrible colleagues and his horrible neighbours. It was horrible and ran for what seemed like forever, probably because despite everything it had a great cast.
 
Top Bottom