The Cellar - US to get its own Little Britain

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US to get its own Little Britain

BBC America has already shown the original Little Britain series, but according to this there may be a different version made for US audiences.

I'm not a HUGE fan of Little Britain myself - not enough character development. Oh okay - I just don't find it that funny. I do kinda wonder how it could possible be Americanised....? Doesn't that take away its unique appeal?

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Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

I do kinda wonder how it could possible be Americanised....? Doesn't that take away its unique appeal?

Ever see the Hollywood version of Red Dwarf? It was awful...

I did. It saddened me.

Hahahaha, i HAVE the US Red Dwarf pilot on my computer, as well as a bunch of other episodes.

I'm gonna eat you little fishie!
I'm gonna eat you little fishie!
I'm gonna eat you little fishie!
Cause I like eating fish!

classic

Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast....

Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for christmas!

The End is by far the best Red Dwarf episode EVER, but I really like Bodyswap and Future Echoes and all the other things that were in the book. Into the sixth season and beyond... it really started getting bad.

"Emergency. Emergency. There's an emergency going on. It's still going on. It's still an emergency. This is an emergency announcement."

"This is not a drill. This is a drill." {holds up electric hand drill, pushes trigger}

"Dave, everybody is dead. Everybody is dead, Dave. Everybody, Dave, is dead. Everybody is, Dave, dead."

"You've got to help me! You've got to be my hands, my touch" "No, nuh-uh, I know the kinds of things you like to touch, no way!"

never mind, we'll always have parrots....

I have not seen the show... but did this not work for the Office?

When I saw the title all I could think was... I still get to see my own dentist!

Although The Office broke the mould of sitcoms at the time (mock documentary, downplayed humour, unknown stars) it was still reasonably easy to translate. People work in offices all over the world. There are middle managers without people skills and over-inflated egos everywhere.

Little Britain on the other hand is a collection of grotesque and grossly exaggerated characters. Some could be Americanised I suppose, but there are many I see as quintessentially British. Although when I started going through them in my head I reaslised there were more that could be translated than I first thought.

My only qualm would be how easily recognisable it could be, and whether the characters would need more explanation/ back story to be funny. For example Dafydd (The Only Gay in the Village) is effectively about people growing up in small isolated places, believing they are the only person experiencing problems. It's turned on its head in the sketch, as Llanddewi-Brefi is shown to be an open minded community full of gays, bi-sexuals, fetishists, TVs etc etc. This is heightened by the fact it is set in a tiny Welsh village - the sort of place that you would expect to be a "dry" Chapel village. Would these sort of non-verbal jokes be possible when set on a continent rather than a small island?

Quote:

Little Britain on the other hand is a collection of grotesque and grossly exaggerated characters. Some could be Americanised I suppose, but there are many I see as quintessentially British. Although when I started going through them in my head I reaslised there were more that could be translated than I first thought.

I wonderef about that too. Having thought about it though, I think it has potential. All they'd have to do would be to concentrate on quintessentially Americian characters....... America has its small towns and its back of beyond. Maybe it'll work

I just think they'll have to change too much.

For example Emily the Rubbish Transvestite relies in part on Britain's long tradition of drag (pantomime, Monty Python, Kenny Everett etc). We find men dressed as women inherently funny, so the audience immediately accepts the humour in the situation. Would a man dressed as an Edwardian lady be a fit subject for humour in the American Midwest for example?

I am thinking about this too hard aren't I? I look forward to seeing it anyway, it's a win-win situation. You either get to deride it and claim Lucas & Walliams have sold out (thus gaining a measure of superiority over rich, talented, successful people) or you split your sides laughing. It's all good babe.

I think if they try to adapt their current stable of characters they'll fail miserably. They need to create new characters with an american audience in mind.

Python translated just fine Sundae.

I'm not saying "Americans don't get British humour" - quite the opposite. I'm saying, why remake a British comedy for an American audience? Either you get it as it is (like Python) or an American will create something completely different and original that works (like Friends).

I agree with you there... though the Americanized Office is funny on its own as well as the UK version.

In the olden days, they figured that middle America wouldn't "get" the comedy enough. With only three channels, it was important to program for the entire nation.

These days, I'd bet it has a lot to do with who gets paid.

I wanna' get paid & a reach-around!

A big issue is that sketch shows are pretty hard to sell in the US, especially primetime. Kelsey Grammer had one recently that failed miserably.

Walked past a poster today for Wicker Man with Nicolas Cage. Sigh. I would ask, "Is nothing sacred?" but feel that would be slightly too arch.

It doesn't sound like a positive reception:

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Matt Lucas and David Walliams star in HBO's "Little Britain USA."
The British sketch comedy series, which began a descent into lowbrow humour before crossing the pond, continues on its unfortunate arc in Sunday's premiere here on HBO.
By Mary McNamara, Times Television Critic
September 26, 2008
Lou and Andy are keystone characters of the British radio turned television hit “Little Britain," a sketch comedy that stars Matt Lucas and David Walliams. Andy (Lucas) is an ill-tempered, mentally challenged young man, and Lou (Walliams) is his patient, clueless friend and caregiver.

They first appeared on television five years ago in Episode 1 of "Little Britain's" first season. Lou had brought Andy to a pool, and while he tried to figure out how to lower the poor ailing guy into the water, Andy got out of the chair, climbed up the diving board, jumped in, swam across the pool and was back in the chair before Lou turned around. The joke is, Andy can walk just fine.

In Episode 1 of "Little Britain USA," which premieres at 10:30 Sunday night on HBO, we meet Lou and Andy as they are beginning a visit to the U.S. While clueless Lou is checking into their motel, Andy is once again drawn to a pool. Only this time he doesn't jump in it, he pees in it. And not just in it, all over the poor woman who happens to be swimming there.

That scene is, in a nutshell, the trajectory "Little Britain" has taken since its British debut. Where once its wildly diverse sketches were politically incorrect glimpses into different facets of British life -- such as Vicky Pollard, the hilariously incoherent working-class teen, and Emily Howard, just an old-fashioned transvestite gal in denial -- now they are firmly rooted in genital humor, an endless fascination with homosexuality and fat jokes, often in the same sketch. "Little Britain USA" adds some new American characters to the Lucas/Walliams repertoire, but the hard-R gross-out humor remains the same.

So if you are a fan of, say, "Little Britain" in Season 3, you will probably like "Little Britain USA." As for the uninitiated, well, I suppose it all comes down to a person's fondness for penis jokes. Because they are everywhere, those penis jokes: in the skits about the petulantly gay prime minister and his attempts to "seduce" the American president, or the one with a law enforcement officer whose erection grows ever larger as he shows off his gun collection, or the bikini-line-trimming friendship between steroid-maimed locker-room buddies.
Not every joke is phallocentric. Breasts are fair game too -- such as the dangling anatomy of Bubbles, a gambling addict who literally loses everything at the cruise ship casino, and the miraculous milk production of the prim and proper mum who is still nursing her infantile thirtysomething son.

Fat people, gay people, racy foul-mouthed old people, at times "Little Britain" feels almost retro, like some old " Flip Wilson" show on speed. Some of it is actually funny -- the rude British hospital receptionist, for instance, or the deathly unhappy married couple seeing themselves reflected in an estranged pair of caged monkeys -- but you pay for every laugh with two groans and a shudder.

Of course, it isn't cricket to judge a show by standards outside its genre. "Little Britain USA" is British satire at its broadest, nodding far more energetically to Benny Hill than to, say, P.G. Wodehouse. And there is humor to be had and insights to be made in the outrageous. A series of skits involving a woman (Walliams) and the "demands" of her sexually sadistic dog are an amusing and ruthless take-down of the anthropomorphization of pets.

But too often whatever pointed observation about American or British society Lucas and Walliams have in mind, whatever message about our hypocritical social mores and behaviors they're trying to send, gets lost in the adolescent guffawing about fat people and primary sex characteristics.

So when Rosie O'Donnell shows up with Marjorie Dawes (Lucas), the obtuse and abusive leader of Fat Fighters, you have to wonder if she knew what she was getting into. Being asked, "Are you a lesbian because you are fat or are you fat because you're a lesbian" is funny in a consciousness-raising way, but like too many of the sketches, this one doesn't stop with "Did she really say that? Good heavens, ha ha."

No, it has to take it one step further to "Did she really say that? Yuk. Hand me the remote."

Actually, I find the last bit quite funny. Is it because I is straight?

Hang on, what? There was a Red Dwarf movie?

I've seen a few episodes of Little Britian and I liked it a lot - especially Vicky Pollard. She cracks me up. I still blatantly refuse to watch the American version of the Office. The original was too good.