Of all the loathsome things the United States does, blindly assuming they can transplant British humour directly into an American context without any consequences whatsoever is like… top 5. For eons now the US film and TV industry has had an obsession with remakes – taking something that worked in a totally different cultural context and porting it straight across to the States. The most notable, and piss-awful, of these attempts came in 2007 when NBC attempted to make a carbon-copy remake of the hugely beloved UK series, The IT Crowd. It sucked infamously. But now, for whatever reason, America wants another crack.
Variety reports that NBC is gearing up to make another attempt at remaking the show for a US audience, but only this time have they thought to get original series creator Graham Linehan on-board to helm it.
Linehan is set to write and executive produce the new series, which is being called a “reimagining” rather than an outright remake, whatever that means.
This will be the third overall attempt NBC has made at remaking The IT Crowd in America. In 2014 they enlisted Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence to have a go at doing it, in a project that ultimately didn’t get off the ground.
But the 2007 attempt is the most infamous one, which went so far as to shoot a pilot. The episode created was an exact shot-for-shot remake of the UK series’ first episode, with only Richard Ayoade being retained from the OG show. Joel McHale replaced Chris O’Dowd, playing a man infinitely too handsome to plausibly be an actual IT tech, and the whole thing exists as kind of a weird, eerie shadow of the British version. A facsimile faded just enough so you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at.
It sucks, horribly, despite working off the same script, proving yet again that exactly copying a previously successful thing does not – and never will – equate to automatic success for the new thing. A fan-made YouTube video comparing the two episodes shows captures the gap between the two shows fairly succinctly.
If the US were ever to make a successful version of the show, it’s obviously going to be through the hand of Linehan, so whatever it is he’s got cooking up is worth at least a half-chance.
But good lord, the expectations for this are low as hell.
