There has always been a greater divide than the Atlantic separating the
UK from the US, and that's been trying to translate our sit-coms into their
'language'. I may be wrong but I don’t think there's been a successful
interpretation yet.
Okay, so I can only think of Bread and Men Behaving Badly at the moment but
that’s still 100% failure if that is all of them.
Now you can add to the list the US version of Ricky Gervais’s The Office. The
pilot was recently aired on NBC and has been reported to have received the worst
ever rating in the network's history.
Apparently the test audience just didn’t get the mockumentary style and found
the show to be "too depressing". Now, instead of Gervais 'executively producing'
a twenty-two episode series, NBC bosses have cut it to just six episodes which
will be aired in the event of something else failing.
Like the US version of Last of the Summer Wine?
