 Starring: Jack Davenport, Gina Bellman, Sarah Alexander, Kate Issitt, Ben Miles, Richard Coyle
Director: Various
Year Of Release: 2000-2004
Plot: Coupling revolves around six friends and their endless attempts to understand the opposite sex, date each other and navigate modern life. Following Susan, Patrick, Steve, Jane, Sally and Jeff, the UK sitcom’s frank attitude to sex and life made it a hit. |
Sometimes the way TV works is slightly baffling. When Coupling started on the BBC in 2000, it was generally accepted that it was a British attempt to emulate Friends. After all is has a very similar premise – the lives and loves of six 20/30-something friends, three of them men and three of them women – but with a more frank attitude to sex. Despite the similarities, in 2003, the US network that made Friends, NBC, bought the remake rights to the British show and decided to do an American version of Coupling.
This meant that the company that owned Friends paid huge amounts of money to remake a show that was basically the same thing they were already airing, but talked about sex more. Did they actually need to pay for the rights to a show with a relatively generic premise of the romantic lives of six people? No. If anything they already owned it because of Friends, but TV is such an uncertain business that US networks would rather try and buy into something that’s already successful (even if it’s in another country) rather than do anything even vaguely original. That said the US version did pretty much use the same exact scripts as the UK version, but Americanised, so at least they got that out of it.
 The Cast Of the American version of Coupling |
Coupling USA was seen as a surefire hit and NBC was extremely keen for it to succeed, as they knew that at the time Friends was on its last season and so they wanted a replacement ready to pick up the slack when Chandler and co. left the airwaves. Sadly for them, despite a massive publicity drive it was a gargantuan failure, and while 10 episodes of the US version were made, only four were ever shown, as the ratings were so abysmal they decided to cancel it.
Although there have been a few British shows that have found success with an American remake – most notably at the moment with The Office – there are a hell of a lot more that have failed miserably. But thankfully for the UK TV industry, the American networks won’t give up. (And we’re only talking scripted programmes here, as we’ve had more success with quiz shows and reality TV, such as Hell’s Kitchen, Britain’s Got Talent (which became American Got Talent), Strictly Come Dancing (which became Dancing With The Stars), Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and even Antiques Roadshow).
For example the sitcom Men Behaving Badly, which was a big hit in Britain with Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey, got an American makeover in 1996, again on NBC, starring Rob Schneider and Ron Eldard (although Eldard later got fired and was replaced by Ken Marino). While it lasted a season and a half, it was never a ratings success and so got canned a few episodes into season two.
More recently there was Life On Mars, which made it through two very successful seasons on British TV, and has now morphed into Ashes To Ashes. It was turned into a US show in 2008 by ABC, and while it started off with decent ratings, five months later and with only 17 episodes in the can, it was cancelled.
The remake of the murder-mystery-musical Blackpool is more baffling. The show ran for one short, six episode series and a two hour special on British TV a few years ago, but never really found an audience. While some loved it, most couldn’t take to the show’s propensity for the characters to burst into elaborate musical numbers where they mimed to classic songs. However Hugh Jackman apparently adored it and championed an American version. It emerged on CBS in the States in 2007, partially promoted on the idea that Jackman would be making occasional appearances on the show.
However that never happened as it suffered the rather ignominious fate of being cancelled after only two very low rated, critically mauled episodes were shown (that’s not the fastest a show has been cancelled though, as the 1969 US skit comedy Turn On was pretty much canned partway through the first episode, after numerous ABC affiliates decided not to return to the show after the first commercial break because they found it rude, bizarre and too experimental).
Other UK-to-US remake failures include the early 2000s Channel 4 teen comedy-drama, As If, which got an American makeover that was cancelled after only two episodes were shown on UPN. Ballykissangel became the 1999 PAX TV series Hope Island, which only lasted a single season. The hit ITV dramedy Cold Feet went to NBC in 1999 but only lasted four episodes. Robbie Coltrane’s murder-mystery series Cracker ended up on ABC in 1997, with Robert Pastorelli in the main role, but that only made it to 16 episodes. Then, in 2007, the Brits-running-an-African-safari drama Wild At Heart hit The CW network in the US as Life Is Wild, but disappeared from screens after 13 episodes, because of low ratings. The Channel 4 series Teachers only made it to six US episodes in 2006, after getting turned into a traditional sitcom (with a studio audience and everything), rather than dramedy it was in the UK.
More puzzling is the cancellation of the American version of Eleventh Hour, which was cancelled by CBS last year after only 18 episodes. The reason it’s slightly strange is that it actually had pretty decent ratings, but apparently the network felt it was losing too many of the viewers of the show before it, CSI, and so they canned it.
Other attempted transfers never made it past the network ordering a pilot, such as The Vicar Of Dibley (which would have starred Kirstie Alley in the US), Red Dwarf (which has had two separate US pilots but never got a series), Spaced, The IT Crowd and Footballer’s Wives.
However while there have been more misses than hits, some UK show have survived their transfer across the Atlantic and prospered. As mentioned, The Office has been a big hit and is now onto its sixth season in the US. There’s also Absolutely Fabulous, which became Cybill (starring Cybill Shepherd) in America. That lasted four seasons and won two Golden Globes in the mid-90s. Queer As Folk also went to the US, outdoing the 10 episodes of the British version with five seasons and 83 episodes in the US.
 Till Death Do Us Part became the beloved All In The Family in the US |
However, perhaps the biggest UK-to-US TV successes ever came in the 1970s, when two British sitcoms went to America and became classic series that are still classed as a couple of the greatest US TV comedies ever made.
Till Death Do Us Part, which introduced British audiences to the sexist, racist, reactionary working class character Alf Garnett (played by Warren Mitchell), became All In The Family in the US in 1971, with Carroll O’Connor as the similarly bigoted Archie Bunker. The show ran for nine seasons and 208 episodes, becoming one of the best loved American series ever made. Indeed it’s still shown over there now, although few realise it’s actually based on a British show.
Interestingly All In The Family got a spin-off, Maude, starring Bea Arthur. That series then got remade for UK TV as Nobody’s Perfect, although in Britain it had no connection to Till Death Do Us Part. Then the Maude spin-off Good Times became the UK show The Fosters, although that wasn’t connected to either Till Death Do Us Part or Nobody’s Perfect.
The other great success was with Steptoe and Son, which went to America and got remade at Sanford and Son, adding race into the mix of the original’s interest in class divisions. One of the first sitcoms with African-American lead characters to catch on in the mainstream in the US, Sanford and Son was steered to the screen by the same person who’d made All In The Family a success, Norman Lear. It ran for 135 episodes between 1972 and 1977, and has lived on ever since in syndication.
However it wasn’t all good news from British TV remakes in America in the 70s, as Are You Being Served? never got past an unaired pilot, called Beanes Of Boston, in 1979. The same was true of a 1976 effort to take Dad’s Army to the US, but renamed The Rear Guard. Fawlty Towers meanwhile has had three goes on American television. The first, starring Harvey Korman and Betty White, never got past a pilot, then Bea Arthur had a go in 1983 with Amanda’s, but that only made it to 13 episodes before getting cancelled, while in 1999 John Laroquette starred in Payne, but only eight episodes of that show were ever aired.
Although American TV is notorious for cancelling shows before they’ve had a chance to find their audience, it does seem that with remakes of British shows, there have been a hell of a lot more misses than hits. As All In The Family, Sanford and Son and more recently The Office prove, it is possible to transport UK TV over the pond, but it’s a lot harder than many television executives seem to think. That’s not going to stop them trying though.
TIM ISAAC
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