{"id":245,"date":"2012-02-07T14:26:21","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T19:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/?p=245"},"modified":"2012-02-08T12:03:44","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T17:03:44","slug":"american-adaptations-and-being-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"American Adaptations and Being Human"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion about how Dr. Who<\/em>\u00a0might translate onto American television. Some of us wondered if something that worked so well with a British audience would work in the US, especially since it’s so quintessentially British and typically somewhat educational. Being Human<\/em>, which most people could easily compare to the concept of other supernatural dramas on in the US, provides a chance to see how a non-quintessencially British, non-educational show translates to US television.<\/p>\n

Hopefully some people have stumbled across an episode of BH: US<\/em>\u00a0on Syfy. A lot of the first season drew from the first series of BH:UK, <\/em>with the majority of the first half of the American series almost exactly remaking episodes from the original. One of those episodes, “Ghost Town” in the UK and “Some Thing to Watch Over Me” in the US, serves as a great example of the adaptation of a British show for the US small screen.<\/p>\n

I am a huge fan of BH:UK<\/em>\u00a0and I enjoy BH:US<\/em>\u00a0as well, but in this case the American translation just didn’t work. I believe the term I’d use to best describe the adaptation of this episode as “the reason we can’t have nice, British things.” The main drive of the plot of both episodes is Annie (Sally in the US version) making friends with a male ghost from the 1980s named Gilbert (Tony in the US version). Gilbert\/Tony helps Annie\/Sally figure out why her spirit is unsettled and it’s just a really sweet, tragic episode.<\/p>\n

My major problem with the adaptation of the series as a whole is that some of the episodes followed the original so closely<\/em>, it was either smothering or people who had seen the original felt like turning the TV off because they had seen almost the same thing not too long before. I think that the concept itself is a fairly translatable one, but the issues arise when there’s a lack of original ideas specific to the new context that the show is put into – in this case, the shift from a BBC channel for young adults to an even more niched channel like Syfy.<\/p>\n

The thing that ruins the new episode for me is the characterization of Tony. In the UK version, Gilbert is a great mix of cool\/quirky, cigarette and records in hand. In the US version, Tony has a mullet. Enough said. Additionally, he’s not as tragic and complex as Gilbert. He’s just kind of a dude. I didn’t feel for him the same way I did the cool, brooding Gilbert. The two characters weren’t just different, they embody complete opposite sides of the 1980s aesthetic while trying to play the exact same role.<\/p>\n

Cool:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tragic:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why did so many people love the US version of The Office<\/em>? Because, while it was based on the UK original and shared some character archetypes, it breathed a new kind of life into the original series. It didn’t copy, plot for plot and character for character, the things that made sense to a different kind of audience the way the beginning of BH:US <\/em>did.<\/p>\n

Luckily the show found its footing and (because it was on a longer series schedule) had to get creative and cut its cord to the original, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of their own about adaptations. We do it to all sorts of television programming all of the time. When does it work? When does it utterly fail? What translates and what doesn’t?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion about how Dr. Who\u00a0might translate onto American television. Some of us wondered if something that worked so well with a British audience would work in the US, especially since … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":590,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/yankswatchingtelly\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}