So NBC’s importing The IT Crowd?…

Yep – they’ve shot a US pilot, and I found out it had been picked up today as well.

It’s without doubt my favourite comedy series this decade by a hell of a long way – I went to see three episodes of Series 2 of the UK show recorded recently.

I keep meaning to write reviews of the UK series for NTS…

50% might be pushing it a bit. The only successful transfers that I can think of over the years are Alf Garnett and The Office and there have been dozens of failures.

The IT Crowd seems like a strange decision seeing as it received a mixed reception here but maybe that won’t hurt it.

>50% might be pushing it a bit. The only successful transfers that I can think of over the years are Alf Garnett and The Office and there have been dozens of failures.

Yeah. The translation of Britcoms has had a much lower success rate than 50%. I’d say it’s even lower than 10%.

BUT if you broaden your criteria to include other formats (game shows, reality programs…) you’ll find the success rate increases hugely.

Personally I don’t know why we need to remake these shows at all. If NBC is so interested in these Britcoms why not set aside a night as “British Comedy Night” or some such thing, buy up the rights to the shows it likes, and air them in a rotating way akin to Adult Swim, or Nick at Night or something? That way if a show gets poor ratings you can easily swap it out for an old standby (Fawlty Towers, Blackadder) without having sunk millions of dollars into production.

The main reasons for them to do a remake are – 1) the American viewers can relate to the characters and situations more easily, so less people will turn off, 2) a British series (especially comedy) is never long enough for them, 3) there’s so many crappy ideas for new shows kicking around that when a promising concept like The IT Crowd comes along they need to snap it up.

It should be OK but I imagine the actual IT jokes will be way overdone.

Maybe not huge commercial successes, but the likes of Dad’s Army and The Likely Lads were converted into very good movie versions. The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse is a more recent example. But the myth, especially over here in the UK, is that any sit-com that brings out a movie version is going to be rubbish. Cliches such as all the characters going on a foreign holiday (Are You Being Served), or a character being mistaken for a gangster (Only Fools and Horses) tend to cloud the question of whether the film-length version is funny.

On a side-note, the term “Britcom” annoys me – as if being British is a genre in itself. That’s like saying Friends is the same as Wondershowzen.

The League Of Gentlemen film was never going to be a commercial success. As much as I like it, anyone who doesn’t know the series or characters is just going to be ‘what the fuck?’. It’s not as though you needed to know what had happened in the series but you really do need to ‘get’ the League to find it funny or interesting. It probably would have been better if they had done a film without the Royston Vasey characters, but they might not have gotten it greenlit in that case. I’d love to see a horror movie done by them.

There is a big difference between all sitcom film adaptations being rubbish, and them not being as good as the original series. I agree that they are very rarely as good as the series which inspired them – but my argument is that a lot of people seem to think they are absolute worthless rubbish, when that isn’t the case at all.

The best one I’ve seen is the Till Death Us Do Part film – I think it’s a wonderful film, and in a lot of ways equal to the series. (The second film is a disaster, mind you – albeit an entertaining one.) Even the more mediocre ones – such as the Man About The House (which is a top-class sitcom, but mistakes were made in the transfer to film) often have a huge amount to enjoy.

> or a character being mistaken for a gangster (Only Fools and Horses) tend to cloud the question of whether the film-length version is funny.

I realise I’m probably shooting myself in the foot with this one but when did that become a cliche? Off the top of my head I can’t think of anyone else doing it.

The League of Gentleman film I thought was pretty poor with a weak second half. (whose is this second half it’s very weak?).

Still you’re right not all british sitcoms do badly as films, that Spaced movie did hugely well on both sides of the atlantic.

So the 2nd series is coming then, next Friday (August 24th). Just in case you didn’t know.

And it looks like Ch4 are gonna trail the fuck out of it (god, aren’t they simply the best at doing that, surely the number of times Skins has been plugged must break some sort of record??). And look at the nice timeslot they’ve given it – 9.30pm, between the two Big Brother shows, that pretty much guarantees a respectable viewership for the first episode.

Can’t wait. Can’t FUCKING wait, in fact! I already like the jokes in the trailers. Raise your hand if you’ve ever cleaned your teeth in the bath.

> and I?ve already seen half of them?

Was there much pre-recorded location stuff?

> Weirdly enough, the location episode was by far the best of the three, and I think the audience reaction confirms that.

That’s absolutely true. The next ep shot – which will be episode one – also didn’t beat it.

But then, yeah, the retakes made a huge difference. Because of the stylised direction, these shows rely on the edit quite a lot. So I suspect the regular studio eps will be 30% improved simply by being cut right. (Which includes the best version of jokes they did alternatives for!)

> There is one cut-to joke that just had me in absolutely agony laughing?

I still haven’t stopped. Just perfection, that.

So if I had to choose between importing The IT Crowd and Hyperdrive, what would everyone recommend?

Linehan is fantastic at cut-to jokes. See Father Ted for details – something that never fails to crack me up is Dougal looking out of the window for the bishops coming saying ‘there’s no sign of them yet, Ted’ and Ted saying ‘Dougal…’ cut-to the three bishops sitting in the room ‘Dougal, they’re here’. I’m laughing just thinking about it. The other one is when it cuts to the funeral ‘Dougal’s doing a funeral! You let Dougal do a funeral?!?!!’ Brilliant.

The cut to Bernard working in the fast food place in series one is one of the most sublime pieces of editing-related timing I’ve ever seen in a sitcom…

Oh yeah!!

Bernard: “What can I Get you…”

Customer: “er……………………………………..er………..
……………………………………………….ER………………..”

Bernard: “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

Customer: “er, Mam- Mamba Burger”

Bernard: “do you want chips?”

Customer: “yeah”

Bernard: “how many”

Customer: “forty?”

Sorry….. HAHA!

> I suppose they?ll go back and add in the pauses

Surely that’s better than the cast messing up their flow by leaving forced space for laughter. The pauses in the Xtended Tikka are fucking excruciating.

What I mean is that in order for the Xtended to work the pauses for laughter need to be cut. I wish they’d done the whole of VII with no laughter. The phrase ‘all or nothing’ springs to mind. I mean, it’s not as though there’s much to laugh at anyway.

I think it’s one of those “oh the audience can’t see him thinking about the idea”, they may see him notice the sign. But anyone can “notice” a sign and not action on it…

>the one where Denholm leaves

So does this mean Morris is present for at least one episode?

His departure is the main story for the episode, but only gives him two-scenes – one pre-recorded, the other pre-recorded and show in the location pre-record.

If you see what I mean…

I think Jen’s character is really misunderstood. She’s ostensibly a stereotypical woman, but as the first series progresses, it becomes clearer that she’s not actually as good at being ‘girly’ as she thinks she is, and that she actually has more in common with Roy and Moss. Also, I’m fairly geeky, and even I have had silly shoe experiences and have eaten goat’s cheese salad, and have read Heat, so Linehan’s writing really is on the button.

Clip from the first episode here:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/centre/

A RUBBISH choice of clip – it’s very funny in context, but it doesn’t give you the setup required. But Moss’s “HELLO!” is just fantastic.