Shameless

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The family and I have just started watching Shameless on Showtime. I know this is a US remake of a British show. If you get Showtime, I recommend it.

 

Oh boy! What a shameless plug-in.

 

Why not just put the original UK version on? It's obviously going to be miles better.

Shameless is one of my favourite programs.

 

American remakes of Brit shows tend to be bad, to be honest. The only exception I can think of at the moment is The Office, but then it's not hard to beat a show with Ricky Gervais in it.

 

Absolute sacrilege! No way is the US The Office better than the UK original. it just totally missed the point.

 

Still funny though.

 

I dislike Gervais to the point that him being there ruined the show for me. Same thing with the spiderman movies and Toby Macguire (sp?), the worst human being alive.

 

Yeah, I see where you are coming from there to be fair. Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il and Ian Brady have nothing on Toby Macguire.

 

Interesting question. If I had to hazard a guess the first thing that comes to mind is the British accent. I know plenty of people who just don't understand what is being said. I remember growing up my mom and I didn't have a problem, but my Dad could never understand what was going on. On the same vein there are plenty of words that have different meanings and would cause problems.

The final thought I have is the production qualities. Hollywood just does it better.

 

It's strange, I've never met a brit that had trouble understanding a yank accent, but they seem to have a lot of trouble with ours.

 

Introverts.

 

Some elements of the accent are difficult, but I don't find it to be that big a deal, Here in Canada we get some British shows, but not as many as I would like. I love Black Adder, I enjoy The F Word, and others like 'Allo 'Allo, The Thin Blue LIne, Spooks (called MI-5 here), and a few others are quite entertaining. One reason we might not see more of British television is the licencing agreements, perhaps?

 

Possibly interest and humour crossover as well. I know a previewing of Dads' Army shocked some canadians because of the subject matter.

 

And the less said about the american Red Dwarf, the better.

 

I saw the first episode of Shameless and it was very good. A lot of unexpected characters. I haven't kept up, but they are on On Demand, so next time I have time I will.

 

I guess that's a matter of taste and heavily influenced by what people are used to. Many French people would say they prefer movies and series from their own country and so would many Asians, I suppose.

In Holland we have a lot of series from both America and England. Everything is subtitled and so language and accents don't matter when I need to understand speech. I prefer English series to American any time. I just love the accent. Listening to American accents is horrible in most cases, though (to me and many other Dutchies) it's better to understand.

Cool thing, btw, that subtitling. Series and movies keep to have that feeling that is caused by speech. American series stay American, English stay English and French stay French, while it's all understandable. We get to understand the country's jokes and customs because we don't change them to our own culture. We don't need to replace an Irishman or Canadian for a Belgian.

Thinking of it: Are there series on American or English telly from non-English speaking countries? Like from Sweden, Germany, Denmark, France?

 

I can't think of one. British people tend to have an aversion to sub-titles for some reason. I personally don't mind them at all, but the amount of times I've heard people say "Oh God, sub-titles? If I wanted to read, I'd get a book!". Imbeciles.

And no, Hollywood does not 'do it better'. It just does it louder, crasser and with bigger budgets.