Why do American TV companies do this?

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Why is it American TV companies buy scripts from popular UK TV shows and try to recreate the shows ?

They bought 'Red Dwarf' and tried to recreate it with Terri Farrell from DS9 but failed.

They recently bought E4's 'As If' and probably won't be able to recreate it.

Some shows have worked but most just don't.
Yet they show Black Adder and other UK shows without any problems and every other country in the world shows US shows without any problems.

 

I think they do it because they see something that works in England and feel that it's a safe bet. There is a lot of crap on American TV. I personaly like British TV. Monty Python, Benny Hill, etc. The Humor is Great.

 

They also stole Men Behaving Badly and turned it into a sanitised load of crap suitable for puritanical USofA. It lasted about 3 episodes I think.

They have no original idea's, it's a parisitic culture.

[We heard you in the topic where such comments were tolerated, but keep potentially insultive remarks to yourself from now on, ok?] -Tal

[This message has been edited by Taluntain (edited January 15, 2002).]

 

Mirkwood- I'm just curious, where do you live?

 

Sorry Mirkwood but I didn't start this as another why I hate Americans topic. Some American shows are great :
Babylon 5
Crusade
Married with children
Superman
Smallville
Seven Days

These shows play with a lot of good issues and are entertaining.
It's just you don't see any countries buying the scripts to these and recreating them just because the content isn't PC or they contain references to sports.

I heard AS IF is getting shown in Austrailia. Have you seen it yet Mirkwood?

 

I can give you a good answer why American tv suk's as it does, cuz I'm an American(go figur). We just want to sell stuff. Saterdays and Sundays are nothing but info shows on how to save your self from the gov. But yes most of our shows are realy stupid like Weakest Link and Who Want's To Be A Millioniar. They all came from over sea's and most likely work their but it does nothing over here. The only show I really watch is the news and West Wing(really good). I have rented Monty Python once, the one where they were surching for the holy grail, I missed half the movie because I couldn't stop laughing. LOL

 

Americans want to spoil everything. They also spoiled sports like Football (Soccer) and made the bad American Football game, they spoiled the game of Dart by making American dart (with the large bullseye) and they even spoiled Hockey (field hockey) by making Ice-Hockey (have you ever seen nice girls in short skirts hockeying on ice? NO!)

 

Its not only USAians that do recreate foreign shows. Here in Sweden we havent made a sitcom by ourselves in ages. Every one is a USAian or UK show they bought the script from and put in swedish actors.
Some originality please!

[This message has been edited by joacqin (edited January 15, 2002).]

 

Entertainment is a very hard thing to predict. Who knows what the tastes of people are going to be. I'm sure that at any given time, everything is copied in some shape, way or form.
Mirkwood- From what I gather, you are from Australia. I heard many good things about "Down Under." I'ld actually like to visit some day. I hope your day is going well.

 

I think American TV does so much script stealing (not just UK shows, but also old American movies) because the TV execs have just run out of ideas. They can't think beyond "sex and death sell" and the only way they can think of to be cutting edge is to break social taboos. Morons.

I'm bored by "Survivor," but at least it was something new.

 

I dont think it is a matter of stealing, take Saturday Night Live for instance, It was created in Canada, but never would have made it as big as it did if it was produced here. So instead it was produced in the States with mainly Canadian Comedians. The states have Hollywood, the rest of the world doesnt, thus they find the good shows and fund them.

 

People, you just be happy all your TV stations don't run 4 mexican/brazilian soap-operas every day. (With all respect to SouthAmerican culture - these are bad!)
And speaking of the stolen scripts - I personally saw bad clones of "Weakest Link", "Survivor", "Who wants to be a millionnaire" and "Wheel of fortune" on Russian TV. That was pathetic and sad... much worse than UK shows in the US - some of those are at least funny. So look at this from Zen point of view - things could be much much worse.

 

Hollywood is not a very creative place. They make movies from old TV shows, poorly remake movies from other countries (Vanilla Sky is a recent example), take excellent books and make horrible movies and shows from theme.
The nice thing is that if you have BBCA (I get it on Directv) you can watch the original British shows. I don't watch a lot of American (or any other) television shows because they are not well done. Formulaic, boring, tedious, not funny, excessively violent...You get the point.
I do enjoy the Simpsons though.

Headbanger, American football (IMO) is far more entertaining then Soccer. And we didn't invent ice hockey, the Canadians did.

Mirkwood, at least we graced your desert country with our presence by having a season of Survivor there. Australia is good for something!

 

You guys should watch "Almost Live" it's a Seattle based comedy show, very funny indeed. There are a lot of good local shows in America, but I agree all of the large network stuff is crap. Also we have channels like Sci Fi and the History Channel which are very good, not everyone watches crap TV, and I'm sure everyone has it.

 

Jack... it's so stupid... American Football... and they almost never use there feet but only their hands.... WHy didn't they call it American Handball?

Ah and soccer is more interesting though... at least here... American soccer sucks

 

I'll agree, American football isn't properly named. Moreover, I think that it takes a better athlete to play soccer(real football).

The only question I have is: Why do they call Cricket Cricket?

 

Headbanger, I agree that the name is bad. But does that mean that it is not entertaining? And my point was that American Football is not derivative of (did not derive from) Soccer. So to say that Americans screwed up Soccer by inventing American Football is absurd.

As far as which is more interesting, that is completely subjective. I find World Cup Soccer extremely boring. It's slow and nothing happens for long periods of time. Now, I admit, I don't understand the finer points of the game and am certainly missing some of the subtleties.

Garett Jax, a Soccer player is more athletic than a footbal player? That's hilarious. Soccer requires little or no upper body strength (when compared to American Football), does not involve real contact (when compared to American football), and requires no hand skills (with the exception of the goalie). Excluding offensive linemen (the big guys that block for the quaterback and running backs) everyone on the football field is an athlete of the highest caliber.
They have televised contests between American Football players involving competitions of physical fitness. One of the contests (between defensive backs that cover receivers) is incline bench press set to 225 pounds (102 kg) and repeated as many times as possible. These guys can do over 30 reps. And they run 40 yards (36.8 meters) in less than 4.4 seconds. I would like to see ANY Soccer player do that. And these are amongst the smallest guys on the field.
Junior Seau, middle linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, bench presses over 500 (227 kg) pounds and runs a 4.5 40 yard (36.8 meter) dash. I would like to see ANY Soccer player do that. And he's not the biggest guy on the field (he ways about 250 pounds (113.4 kg)).

 

Don't get me wrong. I like American football and Soccer both in watching and playing them. I mean as far as the athletes are concerned, soccer players are in better physical condition. Some of the players in American football are in the highest of physical condition while others are not.

Comparing the physical aspect, football is very physical but soccer can be just plain wear you down. Much of our views are what we personaly believe what defines an athlete. I believe that being able to go for a staight 45 minutes (or close to it) shows great athletic abilities. Just my personal opinion.

 

I agree that the definition of athlete is the question here. I don't consider great leg strength and cardiovascular development to be the definition of an athlete. It ignores the muscles of the upper body.

That said, I am off topic.

Both this post and the other American post amaze me. I did not realize the disdain that others around the world feel toward America. I thought only France got this kind of negative attention.

My only experience in Europe is visiting Spain (a wonderful place). While there, I found the people to be very friendly and did not ever feel that I was disliked just for being an American.
Based on this experience (a two week visit), I would not draw the kind of broad based conclusions (positive or negative) about Spain that people are making on this board about America. I would bet that most of the truly venomous comments are coming from people who have never spent a significant amount of time here.

 

Faviorite bit in the holy grail? when the people were running around animated for 10 minutes, And then it goes: "suddenly, the animator, Died" And then it continued the film! Hilarious!