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I'm pretty sure this pilot is the same script as episode 1 of the original UK series. Clearly someone felt the need to recast and reshoot the series with US ac

• danjoredd 4y ago
  Yes, at least in my circles. Most people I know have watched it and like it. My old boss used to have "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" as his ringtone, which got annoying after about a month. Still a good show though
• WorldMaker 4y ago
  That kind of thinking still exists. The most recent example I can think of is Ghosts on CBS as the US version of the UK Ghosts. CBS' streaming service (Paramount+) will even recommend the UK original and you can compare them side-by-side. (Another somewhat recent example to mind was FX's Wilfred as the US version of the Australian Wilfred TV show. Hulu picked up the Australian show so that you could compare them side-by-side. For streamers this is easy content recommendations.) TV and Movie executives are always looking for "low risks" and "proven formula" will always be a way to lower risk. Shows and movies from the same originating country get "rebooted" all the time. Doing a fresh take across cultural boundaries is interestingly a higher risk as studios try to figure out if the original premise has legs in the new country. Some of what we see is survivorship bias: The US Office was huge so that gets mentioned a lot. But there were a lot of similar attempts that never made it past the pilot because the risks were too high or it just didn't seem to work or whatever. Off the top of my head, similar to this US IT Crowd pilot there are also "lost" pilots you can find for US Doctor Who and US Red Dwarf. The fascinating thing about both of those attempts occurred during different points of the height of the PBS/BBC partnership. Up until about the late 90s/early 00s PBS was the most common importer of BBC programming from the UK. (That shifted when the BBC decided it could be a stronger revenue stream, starting chasing bigger bids from US cable channels, and then eventually cofounded the BBC America cable channel.) At various points in time PBS' biggest audiences tuned into Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, and Blake's 7 (among others on the sci-fi side of their programming), so even in the "old" TV era these US attempts knew there was some pre-existing audience familiar with the original UK shows through PBS at the time. So streamers have exactly created that as a "new" idea or new thinking so much as shifted the economics of it. (PBS was public funded and not making a lot of money for how popular its showing of UK shows were. Streamers are all big for-profits that use multi-cultural content for moats around their subscription fees. Including BBC America's current home AMC+.)
• macksd 4y ago
  It has been quite popular in my circles, but then I have a disproportionate concentration of British-empire immigrants and IT folks in my circles, so... Maybe?
• googlryas 4y ago
  Not at all. There's a cadre of people who enjoy British television programming in America, but they don't count. I'd estimate that the number of people that have watched for example the UK office is maybe 1% or less than the people that watched the US office in the US.
  • autoexec 4y ago
    You wouldn't have look very hard to find an American who has seen Downton Abbey, Doctor Who, or Bake Off. The biggest problem keeping Americans from watching UK TV is access, not some inherent dislike or disinterest in compelling television whenever British people are involved. A show has to be wildly popular before Americans even get the chance to be exposed to it, which really limits the amount of viewers for UK programing, but that's no reason to assume that shows have to be recast and refilmed before an appreciable number of Americans will be interested in them. If American producers want to remake shows from the UK I wish they'd do it with panel shows. It's an entertaining genre seen in many countries that just never took off in the US. At least then they'd be more justified in bringing in American talent so guests are more recognizable.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      During Covid, a lot of atypical British stuff showed up on US network tv. Not new stuff, either; networks picked through the recent catalog to find stuff they thought would work. One example was Dead Pixels. > If American produces want to remake shows from the UK I wish they'd do it with panel shows. They do, but they are very bad. They just remade Would I Lie To You? recently. It was not very funny. They did a Taskmaster a few years ago. Horrific.
    • bckygldstn 4y ago
      There was a US remake of Taskmaster, which is like 50% a panel show. It was exceedingly terrible despite keeping 1 of the 2 UK hosts, and especially compared to the excellent New Zealand and Swedish Taskmaster remakes. I agree about access though. I've introduced a bunch of US friends to Taksmaster who devour the seasons available on youtube, but are then out of options to see the rest.
• fragmede 4y ago
  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944954/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0944954/ Doesn't name the producer responsible, but "someone" is someone in Hollywood, probably at NBC.
• Longlius 4y ago
  Part of it is simply different television formats. The Office UK specifically aired on BBC One without commercials which meant that it had to be cut down to fit on a major network's timeslot of 20-24 min. Shows like that typically have to go to special TV stations like PBS or BBC America in order to get a commercial-free timeslot or (in BBC America's case) finagled into a less common time slot with weird commercial break timings. Even with shows that have the same length as a standard US show, the break timings are at different points making it more complicated for TV networks to schedule ad space around. And then there's the larger issue of a lot of British TV actors simply not having the recognizability of their American counterparts which is a major selling point (esp in the pre-web media days). Steve Carrell was a minor star from his time on the Daily Show which made him a good fit to 'sell' the US Office. >Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US? It was a minor cult hit, especially among the technologically-inclined demographic. But it's not especially well-known.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Let's face it, the US office was a more engaging show cast with funnier & better looking actors. That's really the secret to its success - it was just really good, end season slump not withstanding.
    • colordrops 4y ago
      It's subjective - I found the UK office to be more funny and authentic. I couldn't watch the US version without cringing at the unnatural sitcom-iness of it.
      • LAC-Tech 4y ago
        I think my issue with the UK office is that it was just too bleak and dull to be funny. I got the jokes, but it didn't make laugh, just made me kind of feel worse about life. This is not a "UK comedy is has more flawed characters" thing either, IT Crowd, Peep Show were full of terrible, flawed, miserable human beings but there were still some drama & larger than life aspects to those shows that gave it some element of "relief". UK office has no relief, it's just pure misery.
• krade 4y ago
  no, they've changed quite a bit, only the first scene is sticking somewhat with the original version. 5 minutes in at least half the dialog has been rewritten. and all the changes are for the worst.
  • ALittleLight 4y ago
    I watched the scene where they first introduce the IT guys and was disappointed to see they cut the finger-licking for some reason.
    • addingnumbers 4y ago
      They completely undermined the first establishment of "have you tried turning it off an on again?" The line doesn't land half as well without the entire 45 seconds (no exaggeration, I counted on the seek bar) of Roy licking his fingers and drinking tea while the phone rings first.
  • yaddaor 4y ago
    The pacing and joke delivery is completely shattered.
• jedberg 4y ago
  A lot of people in the US would turn it off because "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent". The reason they get away with being on Netflix is that they don't need to be super popular to be worth it for the streaming networks if they pick it up for a cheap price. Linear TV had a limited number of time slots and had to be very choosey with what they put on. It needed to have massive appeal in all parts of the country.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • RajT88 4y ago
    > "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent" This is charitable. Probably a lot of folks here just have a general disdain for all things foreign. I am not sure anyone has ever tried to put numbers to the distinction between the two groups.
    • tonfreed 4y ago
      The thing that amuses me as an Australian is the subtitles when a pom, Irish, or Scot is talking. I've not seen it with Australians, but I wouldn't be surprised
      • RajT88 4y ago
        Speaking of subtitles. My god, on the UK Show DVD releases, the subtitles tracks made it a whole new show.
      • unwind 4y ago
        I had to read your comment twice, I first mis-read "pom" as being a badly kermed [1] "porn", which made the entire thing hard to parse. Then I realized I wasn't sure what "pom" means (not a native speaker, and from the northern hemisphere) either, so had to look it up [2]: "(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, mildly derogatory slang) An Englishman; a Briton; a person of British descent". It's more of the rhyming slang, didn't know that was a thing for Australian slang. [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keming https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/keming [2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pom#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pom#Noun
• oogali 4y ago
  I wonder if it really just comes down to chopping it up for ads. As in, the cost of reshooting is less than the cost of syndicating the original and re-cutting it for American ad time slots. From my childhood, the only place I remember seeing unedited British shows was on my local PBS affiliate which doesn’t show ads (maybe once every hour).
• magic_hamster 4y ago
  The main reason would be the number of episodes. The UK series is very short which is typical. US shows try to stay on for as long as possible to maximize profits. That's exactly what they've done with The Office.
  • foobar1962 4y ago
    > The UK series is very short which is typical. Indeed, there were 4 series each of 6 episodes, plus one special, so only 25 shows in total. IIRC in one of the series extras this is talked about: because a series is just 6 episodes, producers are willing to give a wider range of ideas a chance, and if they do well, a second season (of six more episodes) isn't a big stretch. Notably there wasn't a fifth season because they all felt the concept had gone as far as it need to: they didn't want to "jump the shark".
• physhster 4y ago
  It's exactly the same script.
  • tlokas 4y ago
    Some parts are different. One thing that put me off was that the boss wasn't an insane lunatic that did random things. The boss is the US version was a more collected, planning and evil character. Like the scene where he called back after firing an entire department to say "I was just keeping the IT-department in line", suggesting that he knew what they where up to all along. The UK boss wouldn't do that. He would keep doing things that only made sense to his insane brain, until something went down hill enough that he just jumped out of a window in the middle of a meeting.
    • foobar1962 4y ago
      > until something went down hill enough that he just jumped out of a window Irregularities in the pension fund.
    • jeroenhd 4y ago
      That single unnecessary addition after the "team" scene completely diffused Reynholm's character, I don't understand why they would do that. I guess they're going for the evil boss kind of thing but it doesn't seem to fit the format at all. I think this remake could've gone well if they changed up the script a bit and maybe alter the characters some more. Except for the views and some change of wording, this felt like a fan remake featuring Richard Ayoade more than it felt like a serious attempt to get the show to America.
• jonathankoren 4y ago
  The UK show has like 6 episodes in a season, while an American show needs at least 22.
  • kelnos 4y ago
    That seems to be changing, though, for many popular (expensive?) shows. Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley, all the recently-new Star Trek series, The Expanse, The Mandalorian, The Orville... They all have seasons in the ballpark of 10 episodes.
    • jonathankoren 4y ago
      With the exception of The Orville, none of these were ever network shows, and only The Expanse aired on basic cable, which does often have ~13 episodes. IT Crowd USA was supposed to be a primetime NBC sitcom.
  • ryanbrunner 4y ago
    That's almost completely a relic nowadays though. Most things worth watching are on streaming, which has pretty much completely abandoned the 22 episode format and 6-10 seems to be where things have settled.
    • lupire 4y ago
      It's bizarre. Sometimes I pop into a streaming service and see a show from 5-10 years ago, originally syndicated from a TV channel, and it's not bad, but it's just... An OK idea drawn out until it's boring. OTOH we have these MCU shows now, barely (if at all) longer than a movie, but chopped into 6x20min episodes that give it a bumpy pacing and flow, and over before anything happens.
• soylentgraham 4y ago
  There are lots of other examples too; see the awful red dwarf US pilot with jane leeves as holly
• dark-star 4y ago
  They did the same with "Coupling", a funny UK sitcom that was actually unbearable to watch in its US format. Something about the the jokes just doesn't translate 1:1 to American actors or whatever...
  • louthy 4y ago
    It's kind of silly, as Coupling was clearly the UK's attempt at Friends.
• salicideblock 4y ago
  Maybe that's why it did not make it past pilot. Why reshoot if it's going to be so similar?
  • eddieroger 4y ago
    That was the style at the time. There were a handful of shows that came over to the US from the UK - The Office, Coupling, IT Crowd - but only The Office took off, and really only took off once it found it's own voice for American audiences. In many cases, they were shoot-for-shoot remakes with American actors and some modifications (Jim instead of Tim, Pam instead of Dawn), but this one is down to the credits identical, even bringing Moss over. I think there is room for British comedies in the US, as long as they're open to adaptation. David Brent was a terrible boss and awful person, but Michael Scott had to at least be a good salesman to be believable as middle management. Little differences like that made the show work.
  • JamesSwift 4y ago
    I think they probably realized that the success of the series were due to the characters, and not so much the writing. So if its going to live/die based on the audiences response to the characters then why spend time working on the script? And I have to say, this episode of the US IT Crowd just wasn't the same for me. This version is quirky and forgettable. The cast of the UK version is _so_ good that it elevates it to a hilarious classic.
• itsoktocry 4y ago
  >like they did the US Office. The UK and US The Office are both great shows in their own right. But they aren't very similar, outside of the setting.
  • will0 4y ago
    The first episode of the US office is pretty much a shot-for-shot remake of the first episode of the UK office. After that they diverged a fair bit.