Too bad they didn't make it to episode 2. I feel like "they're not just THE emergency services, they're YOUR emergency services" is one of the most British things I can imagine. (I say that as an American, though, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.)
The IT Crowd always impressed me with their set design. I was working as "IT" at the time, and our office was nearly identical to the one in Season 1. We had O'Reilly stickers everywhere. There were an infinite number of desk toys all over the place. We spent 99% of our day screwing around. It just felt so authentic to me at the time, and still does to this day. (Some of that screwing around was legit office stuff, though. Our air conditioner's drainage pipe was blocked, so we rigged up a fish tank pump to pump the water out of it into a giant bucket. We'd then dump that in one of the many floor drains that our office had, because of course our building's hallway had floor drains every 3 feet. The other 1% of the day was screwing around under the guise of helping people. We were the computer support team for the Physics department at the University of Chicago. People who had recently won the Nobel prize would come to us with things like "my hard drive died", and we would just put it in a plastic bag, immerse it in liquid nitrogen, and copy off their files. Worked every single time. Did we ever try copying the files before freezing the thing? Absolutely not. We weren't the scientists, we were a bunch of random idiots trying to help, and we had an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen in the building.)
That's fascinating, I've never heard of hard drive data recovery using liquid nitrogen. Is the idea that the lower temperature prevents the drive from overheating long enough to recover the data? Sounds very cool.
I made an account just to say thank you for your work. And also that I was an undergrad at the time and once used the liquid nitrogen to freeze-dry some cheese fries.
I'm pretty sure this pilot is the same script as episode 1 of the original UK series. Clearly someone felt the need to recast and reshoot the series with US actors (plus Richard Ayoade), like they did the US Office.
I wonder if that's old thinking (or wasn't actually needed) - the amount of UK TV that's now on Netflix and other OTT platforms seems to suggest that US audiences are open to enjoying original UK series without being reshot. Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?
Part of it is simply different television formats. The Office UK specifically aired on BBC One without commercials which meant that it had to be cut down to fit on a major network's timeslot of 20-24 min. Shows like that typically have to go to special TV stations like PBS or BBC America in order to get a commercial-free timeslot or (in BBC America's case) finagled into a less common time slot with weird commercial break timings. Even with shows that have the same length as
a standard US show, the break timings are at different points making it more complicated for TV networks to schedule ad space around.
And then there's the larger issue of a lot of British TV actors simply not having the recognizability of their American counterparts which is a major selling point (esp in the pre-web media days). Steve Carrell was a minor star from his time on the Daily Show which made him a good fit to 'sell' the US Office.
>Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?
It was a minor cult hit, especially among the technologically-inclined demographic. But it's not especially well-known.
A lot of people in the US would turn it off because "I can't understand what they are saying with their funny accent". The reason they get away with being on Netflix is that they don't need to be super popular to be worth it for the streaming networks if they pick it up for a cheap price.
Linear TV had a limited number of time slots and had to be very choosey with what they put on. It needed to have massive appeal in all parts of the country.
Not at all. There's a cadre of people who enjoy British television programming in America, but they don't count. I'd estimate that the number of people that have watched for example the UK office is maybe 1% or less than the people that watched the US office in the US.
I wonder if it really just comes down to chopping it up for ads.
As in, the cost of reshooting is less than the cost of syndicating the original and re-cutting it for American ad time slots.
From my childhood, the only place I remember seeing unedited British shows was on my local PBS affiliate which doesn’t show ads (maybe once every hour).
That kind of thinking still exists. The most recent example I can think of is Ghosts on CBS as the US version of the UK Ghosts. CBS' streaming service (Paramount+) will even recommend the UK original and you can compare them side-by-side.
(Another somewhat recent example to mind was FX's Wilfred as the US version of the Australian Wilfred TV show. Hulu picked up the Australian show so that you could compare them side-by-side. For streamers this is easy content recommendations.)
TV and Movie executives are always looking for "low risks" and "proven formula" will always be a way to lower risk. Shows and movies from the same originating country get "rebooted" all the time. Doing a fresh take across cultural boundaries is interestingly a higher risk as studios try to figure out if the original premise has legs in the new country. Some of what we see is survivorship bias: The US Office was huge so that gets mentioned a lot. But there were a lot of similar attempts that never made it past the pilot because the risks were too high or it just didn't seem to work or whatever.
Off the top of my head, similar to this US IT Crowd pilot there are also "lost" pilots you can find for US Doctor Who and US Red Dwarf. The fascinating thing about both of those attempts occurred during different points of the height of the PBS/BBC partnership. Up until about the late 90s/early 00s PBS was the most common importer of BBC programming from the UK. (That shifted when the BBC decided it could be a stronger revenue stream, starting chasing bigger bids from US cable channels, and then eventually cofounded the BBC America cable channel.) At various points in time PBS' biggest audiences tuned into Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, and Blake's 7 (among others on the sci-fi side of their programming), so even in the "old" TV era these US attempts knew there was some pre-existing audience familiar with the original UK shows through PBS at the time. So streamers have exactly created that as a "new" idea or new thinking so much as shifted the economics of it. (PBS was public funded and not making a lot of money for how popular its showing of UK shows were. Streamers are all big for-profits that use multi-cultural content for moats around their subscription fees. Including BBC America's current home AMC+.)
no, they've changed quite a bit, only the first scene is sticking somewhat with the original version. 5 minutes in at least half the dialog has been rewritten. and all the changes are for the worst.
It has been quite popular in my circles, but then I have a disproportionate concentration of British-empire immigrants and IT folks in my circles, so... Maybe?
Yes, at least in my circles. Most people I know have watched it and like it. My old boss used to have "Have you tried turning it off and back on again?" as his ringtone, which got annoying after about a month. Still a good show though
The main reason would be the number of episodes. The UK series is very short which is typical. US shows try to stay on for as long as possible to maximize profits. That's exactly what they've done with The Office.
They did the same with "Coupling", a funny UK sitcom that was actually unbearable to watch in its US format. Something about the the jokes just doesn't translate 1:1 to American actors or whatever...
I love 2:58's reference to the Sony rootkit scandal:
> It’s never safe to unload a driver that patches the system call table since some thread might be just about to execute the first instruction of a hooked function when the driver unloads; if that happens the thread will jump into invalid memory.
That wasn't nearly as atrocious as I was expecting. Partly because the script is almost the same as the UK first episode, of course, but even putting that aside it was OK. Richard Ayoade is still great but also Joel McHale is a pretty decent choice as Roy. Even the actress playing Jen, although a bit annoying, wasn't too bad. And the twist that the boss actually isn't crazy is interesting.
Not like the US Red Dwarf pilot. That actually is tear-your-eyes-out bad.
I'd be really curious to find out what Richard Ayoade thought of the entire situation. "So you want me to come play the exact same character, saying the exact same lines and doing the exact same things ... but now it's a 'US' version?"
See, I didn't like Joel McHale as Roy. He's too charming and attractive. I think the key difference is that O'Dowd played Roy as tired of this shit while McHale plays it as annoyed with this shit.
But I think it suffers the same problem as the US Red Dwarf and the early episodes of the US Office, you can't expect to clone the characters. You have to deviate. Hew to the spirit, but not necessarily the letter.
Maybe it could have worked if it were about Moss getting a job in an American company after Reinhold industries went broke. But not a redo of the same script.
It's really hard for me to imagine any alternate scenario where the IT crowd could be improved upon. It was kind of a perfect storm - Richard Ayoade during the only time he ever was or ever will be likable or funny, Christopher Morris back when was one of the funniest people on earth, Matt Berry just being absolutely brilliant and completely stealing the show, the cultural "geek" zeitgest of the time, etc etc. It's not a repeatable experiment, and there's no point trying.
IT Crowd being one of my all time favorite series, it’s impossible for me to be objective but it seems they would need a different script - the way of speaking is just so quintessentially British
I feel like I'm watching a Community dream sequence (with Ayoade as guest star) in which Jeff Winger has to take a computer class to graduate, so he's freaking out.
I wonder if anyone ever tried to do a US version of Father Ted, as that would certainly have been an atrocity for the ages. Although I can't imagine Mathews and Linehan getting on board with such a thing.
I just started a rewatch recently, and it seems it's not an exact copy of the original show's script. For example, in the US version, Denom makes a second call to "disregard" firing the entire floor that doesn't work as a team; and the joke about the voice-activated computer is gone.
> Denom makes a second call to "disregard" firing the entire floor that doesn't work as a team
Yeah, that part was weird because Denom in the US remake is portrayed as a manipulative manager instead of a crazy manager. Maybe the writers had a different character in mind.
[+] [-] jrockway|3 years ago|reply
The IT Crowd always impressed me with their set design. I was working as "IT" at the time, and our office was nearly identical to the one in Season 1. We had O'Reilly stickers everywhere. There were an infinite number of desk toys all over the place. We spent 99% of our day screwing around. It just felt so authentic to me at the time, and still does to this day. (Some of that screwing around was legit office stuff, though. Our air conditioner's drainage pipe was blocked, so we rigged up a fish tank pump to pump the water out of it into a giant bucket. We'd then dump that in one of the many floor drains that our office had, because of course our building's hallway had floor drains every 3 feet. The other 1% of the day was screwing around under the guise of helping people. We were the computer support team for the Physics department at the University of Chicago. People who had recently won the Nobel prize would come to us with things like "my hard drive died", and we would just put it in a plastic bag, immerse it in liquid nitrogen, and copy off their files. Worked every single time. Did we ever try copying the files before freezing the thing? Absolutely not. We weren't the scientists, we were a bunch of random idiots trying to help, and we had an unlimited supply of liquid nitrogen in the building.)
[+] [-] HPsquared|3 years ago|reply
After trying it in a couple of different computers I accidentally dropped the drive and it hit a metal table leg.
After dropping it, the HDD started up and worked fine, and I could copy the contents off.
Maybe the liquid nitrogen worked the same way (thermal shock in place of mechanical shock).
[+] [-] mkwarman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rossmohax|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ConchParabola|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikmeh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dotBen|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if that's old thinking (or wasn't actually needed) - the amount of UK TV that's now on Netflix and other OTT platforms seems to suggest that US audiences are open to enjoying original UK series without being reshot. Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?
[+] [-] Longlius|3 years ago|reply
And then there's the larger issue of a lot of British TV actors simply not having the recognizability of their American counterparts which is a major selling point (esp in the pre-web media days). Steve Carrell was a minor star from his time on the Daily Show which made him a good fit to 'sell' the US Office.
>Did the UK IT Crowd ever take off in the US?
It was a minor cult hit, especially among the technologically-inclined demographic. But it's not especially well-known.
[+] [-] jedberg|3 years ago|reply
Linear TV had a limited number of time slots and had to be very choosey with what they put on. It needed to have massive appeal in all parts of the country.
[+] [-] googlryas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oogali|3 years ago|reply
As in, the cost of reshooting is less than the cost of syndicating the original and re-cutting it for American ad time slots.
From my childhood, the only place I remember seeing unedited British shows was on my local PBS affiliate which doesn’t show ads (maybe once every hour).
[+] [-] WorldMaker|3 years ago|reply
(Another somewhat recent example to mind was FX's Wilfred as the US version of the Australian Wilfred TV show. Hulu picked up the Australian show so that you could compare them side-by-side. For streamers this is easy content recommendations.)
TV and Movie executives are always looking for "low risks" and "proven formula" will always be a way to lower risk. Shows and movies from the same originating country get "rebooted" all the time. Doing a fresh take across cultural boundaries is interestingly a higher risk as studios try to figure out if the original premise has legs in the new country. Some of what we see is survivorship bias: The US Office was huge so that gets mentioned a lot. But there were a lot of similar attempts that never made it past the pilot because the risks were too high or it just didn't seem to work or whatever.
Off the top of my head, similar to this US IT Crowd pilot there are also "lost" pilots you can find for US Doctor Who and US Red Dwarf. The fascinating thing about both of those attempts occurred during different points of the height of the PBS/BBC partnership. Up until about the late 90s/early 00s PBS was the most common importer of BBC programming from the UK. (That shifted when the BBC decided it could be a stronger revenue stream, starting chasing bigger bids from US cable channels, and then eventually cofounded the BBC America cable channel.) At various points in time PBS' biggest audiences tuned into Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, and Blake's 7 (among others on the sci-fi side of their programming), so even in the "old" TV era these US attempts knew there was some pre-existing audience familiar with the original UK shows through PBS at the time. So streamers have exactly created that as a "new" idea or new thinking so much as shifted the economics of it. (PBS was public funded and not making a lot of money for how popular its showing of UK shows were. Streamers are all big for-profits that use multi-cultural content for moats around their subscription fees. Including BBC America's current home AMC+.)
[+] [-] itsoktocry|3 years ago|reply
The UK and US The Office are both great shows in their own right. But they aren't very similar, outside of the setting.
[+] [-] krade|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] macksd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danjoredd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fragmede|3 years ago|reply
Doesn't name the producer responsible, but "someone" is someone in Hollywood, probably at NBC.
[+] [-] jonathankoren|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magic_hamster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dark-star|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salicideblock|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soylentgraham|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] physhster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david_allison|3 years ago|reply
> It’s never safe to unload a driver that patches the system call table since some thread might be just about to execute the first instruction of a hooked function when the driver unloads; if that happens the thread will jump into invalid memory.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-blog-archive/...
[+] [-] popmatrix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frellus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quietbritishjim|3 years ago|reply
Not like the US Red Dwarf pilot. That actually is tear-your-eyes-out bad.
[+] [-] ShakataGaNai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bena|3 years ago|reply
But I think it suffers the same problem as the US Red Dwarf and the early episodes of the US Office, you can't expect to clone the characters. You have to deviate. Hew to the spirit, but not necessarily the letter.
[+] [-] gibspaulding|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pndy|3 years ago|reply
Terry Farrell got role of Cat in the 2nd attempt for pilot, a year before arriving in Deep Space Nine as Jadzia Dax
[+] [-] pryelluw|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abetusk|3 years ago|reply
It's painful to watch all the actors around Richard Ayoade in the American version.
[+] [-] LAC-Tech|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tragomaskhalos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FeistySkink|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bink|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aissen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tumetab1|3 years ago|reply
Yeah, that part was weird because Denom in the US remake is portrayed as a manipulative manager instead of a crazy manager. Maybe the writers had a different character in mind.
[+] [-] bee_rider|3 years ago|reply
Actually, I bet they could literally have dropped in the cast of Better Off Ted and tweaked it a bit to Americanize this show.
[+] [-] molotovh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guidedlight|3 years ago|reply
Like IT Crowd, poor casting was the likely culprit.
https://imdb.com/title/tt0461097/
[+] [-] worble|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jagermo|3 years ago|reply
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_iTeam_%E2%80%93_Die_Jungs_...