Call it the “Skins” phenomenon: North American remakes of British TV shows. Because the accent was just too much for U.S. audiences.
Like, OMG …mate
Obviously “Skins” wasn’t the first TV show remade for this side of the pond. We can choose to focus on the immensely popular “The Office,” whose American version surpassed the popularity of the British original, but I think it can be safely said that the majority of remakes just don’t make the grade.
U.S. remakes have had little staying power: a roughly high-school-aged comedy “The Inbetweeners” was canceled after one season; “Spaced” a comedy about 20-somethings renting an apartment made one pilot; a computer support team in a mid-level company, “The IT Crowd” never made it past the pilot.
What makes these remakes so unpopular, when you look at the success of some remakes, including the recent show-stopping “House of Cards” and the early 2000s show “Queer as Folk”?
U.S.
U.K.
U.S.
But only someone British could come up with such an amazing title
I think the answer can be found in looking at the target audience for the failed shows: the focus is primarily on young people, late teens to early 20s, who are attending universities and colleges, or have recently graduated.
A factor might be that this age group has incredible access to word-of-mouth information, making a remake unnecessary, as most can utilize the Internet to access media form any corner of the world.
But more than this, there are lifestyle differences that cannot be translated between the U.S. and U.K., no matter how similar they are believed to be (seriously, they are not).
The independence of U.K. youth is lost on Americans who live more sheltered lives until a much later age. American students do not need to declare a major until their second year of university, can’t drink until they are 21, and geographically are closed off to other cultures creating a specific “American” identity about similarity over differences.
In the U.K. students know their approximate major around age 16, drink by 18, and live highly culturally diverse lives. While some of the trials and tribulations of growing up can be understood by anyone anywhere (ugh, parents, seriously), cultural differences are a powerful contributor to the likelihood that an audience will relate to a show, especially at this point in life.
Culture takes on a special quality during the years when kids become adults, a way to bond with the people you will begin to build your life with, instead of those you’ve been born around. As you grow with the people you choose to include in your life, your choices take an important place in the creation of your identity, even those as seemingly trivial as your television choices.
Maybe this is why “Skins U.S.” was such a failure: American audiences could not see how they related to characters that were in the same environment, but living such vastly different lives.
Although it also could have had something to do with the blatant copying.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gifake/5375480505/
Culture: student life 