Post-Office

There’s an interesting piece in the current New York Observer on the US version of The Office. Wisely, it seems the persons behind the NBC version have remade the lead character as well (into “Michael Scot”), so that Steve Carell won’t have the impossible job of filling David Brent’s shoes, although it would have been wiser still just to run the original 12 episodes and the Christmas special unmolested.

When dealing with British television, the big three networks operate either out of arrogance or fear: arrogance, because they think these already-proven properties can’t work without their touch (cf. Alan Livingston, the 1960s Capitol Records president who eviscerated the early Beatles releases in North America), or fear that another network will get the rights, succeed and have a hit show to use against them. I think NBC probably smothered its remake of Coupling simply to have prevented ABC or CBS from running a version of the show at 8PM EST on Thursdays in September 2004.

With a few exceptions (Who Wants to be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link, and the plethora of home and gardening shows that were remade for TLC and Discovery, sometimes even keeping the right names), arrogance wins out: it wasn’t necessary to remake Doctor Who, Men Behaving Badly or Queer As Folk for the US. Remaking Absolutely Fabulous and Cracker without substance abuse and language was like doing an American version of All Creatures Great and Small without animals. They should leave well enough alone, but they never do.