The British Comedy Invasion of American Television

It seems that America is looking to British television for its concepts and ideas. It started when Ricky Gervais' The Office was signed up and re-imagined as The Office: An American Workplace, starring Steve Carrell.

Life On Mars and Peep Show are the latest British shows to be given the face lift ready to be presented to American audeinces. But will they work? I would say that one of the reasons these shows are so successful is their Britishness.
Life On Mars drags policeman Sam Tyler back to the 1970s after an accident. But the reason it is so watchable is because in this country, the 197os was a completely different society to the one we have now. We had strikes, a distinct fashion, cutting edge music and racist and sexist social attiitudes. Sam Tyler's boss, Gene Hunt was always designed as a broad shouldered, proud Yorkshire man who drives a Ford Cortina, I cannot see how how the character will carry the same mix of emotions when he is an American possibly stepping out of a Camaro or a Ford Gran Turino.
Peep Show again, works because of the polar distance between the two main characters, with one of them being Mark, the openly patriotic Brit.

So what will be left of these two shows after they have been through the Hollywood filtering process. At best, they may turn into something completely fresh and watchable like The Office: An America Workplace, but at worst they could just become soulless shells of the shows they used to be.

Culture, when it comes to comedy especially, is a difficult thing to grasp. Over here in Britain, broad sitcoms such as Friends, Frasier and Will and Grace have been well received, but it is the more complicated niche comedies that struggle. Although Curb Your Enthusiasm has a big fan base here, it has never matched the success of the three previously mentioned shows. And the fear is that this could work in reverse when our comedies cross the Atlantic.