What is it with America producing shit remakes of brilliant
British comedies? So many fantastically successful shows have been remade as
turgid pieces of shit by dopey American producers desperate for a quick buck. There
have been remakes of, among others, Dad's
Army, The IT Crowd, Coupling, Red Dwarf, Teachers and Fawlty Towers. Some managed a few
episodes before being cancelled, others were so bad they only managed an
unaired pilot. Fawlty Towers was
remade not once, not twice but THREE times and in all instances, it was
unbelievably awful. Why is this? Why the terrible track record with remaking
excellent shows? I know what you're going to say, that The Office has been very successful. Yes, it has inexplicably
rambled on for an unbelievable NINE series despite it being fucking terrible. I
watched the first two and a half series and whereas the Gervais/Merchant original
was spectacular, the remake is spectacularly unfunny. But why? Why do none of
these shows translate across the pond? John Cleese once offered some clues as
to why US remakes so often fail. The problem, he said, was that they changed
what worked best about the series. With the American remakes of Fawlty Towers, Basil,
the beating heart of the series, was so completely changed that nothing else
worked. Replace him with some bumbling fool or a domineering bastard with no
weaknesses and the series falls apart. Another problem is that some things
simply don't translate well from Britain to the US. You might think that it
would be easy to make a sitcom about a hotel and it's eccentric staff and
guests. But, three attempts later, apparently not.
As for The
Inbetweeners, the premise is the same: nerdy teenager moves to a new school
because his newly-divorced mother can't afford to pay for him to go to private
school any more. Once there, he finds himself shunned by everyone except for
the other kids who don't fit in with anyone else - the inbetweeners. As for the
characters, they are almost the same. Three of the four are only slightly
different and the fourth is substantially different. Whereas you might hope
that these differences serve only to distinguish them from their transatlantic
twins, they in fact weaken them. Will is substantially less geeky. It's not
just his personality which is changed but his appearance. Gone are his glasses,
gone is his tie and gone is his briefcase. Even the actor looks wrong. Simon
Bird has a very comfortable everyman quality about him. He looks like the typical geeky sixth form student. The actor who
plays the American Will, Joey Pollari, is simply too... well, handsome. He looks
like he's stepped out of an advert for Gap and he's completely the wrong fit
for the character. Simon is more or less the same, slightly eager and obsessed
with Carly, but still the most normal of the group. Jay is like a condensed
version of the character played so brilliantly by James Buckley, distilled from
the cocky but loveable pervert into an arrogant, aloof, self-obsessed twat.
He's just completely unlikeable - all of Jay's worst qualities and none of his
best, played by a podgy ginger actor called Zack Pearlman. He's just begging to
be hated. Finally, Neil. Replacing the dozy, non-sequitur idiot is a stoner who
has so few lines that you wonder why they didn't just cut out his character
entirely. He's utterly pointless, sitting there as the scene unfolds, mouth
hanging open and gazing into space until he speaks his single line, the
delivery poor and completely flat. Special mention must go to the
interpretation of Mr. Gilbert. Gone is the giant, terrifying bully who hates
everyone and who practically pursues a hilarious vendetta against Will. In his
place is a bored and uninterested teacher who's a boring and uninteresting
character.
So what actually happens? Well, it's an almost shot-for-shot
remake of the first two episodes. Because this is MTV, the episode is only 22
minutes long, so jokes are cut out and they try to hurry things along. Within
two minutes of meeting Will, the others become friends with him. Jokes that
were brilliant in the British version fall flat through terrible delivery. When
Will hits a disabled kid on the head with an American football, the scene ends.
Gone is his brilliant fawning apology and his being chased across the park by incensed
schoolmates. When Simon throws up on Carli's little brother, it's so
over-the-top and obviously fake that it's just not funny. The small amount of
vomit is replaced by a squirting hose of the stuff and it just. Doesn't. Work!
Finally, one of the most notable features of the British version is the almost
unrelenting swearing. Wall-to-wall, episode-to-episode of shit, fuck, clunge,
twat, wanker and every other swear word you can think of. The American version
doesn't just tone it down, it completely removes it. There's no swearing. At
all. Well, there is. Once an episode. And it's bleeped. Fuck that.
The characters are cheap knock-offs, the jokes are lame and
the series as a whole is completely and utterly worthless. There is absolutely
nothing to recommend here. Nothing at all. It's soulless, infuriatingly unfunny
and, to fans of the original series, offensively bad.
0 out of 10.
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