Recently, we’ve been taking a look at the success and failure of some of our home-grown shows after they’ve been taken across the pond to America and remade; but why is it that some do well and others flop horribly?

For example, historically, sitcoms that worked well here haven’t tended to make much of a splash in the USA, which I suspect is because our British humour is not really multi-national and as far as sitcoms especially go, you need to ‘get’ UK humour for them to work.

Last year for example, two of the stars of Frasier – Jane Leeves and Peri Gilpin – tried to sell a US version of Vicar of Dibley to the Fox network, who promptly rejected it. Leeves and Gilpin set up their own production company after Frasier ended and this attempt at redoing VOD saw them cast Kirstie Alley in the lead role. In their version, entitled Minister of the Divine, Alley’s character was a former ‘wild child’ who returned to her home town as their first female minister. Fox didn’t get the humour and could see nothing worth building on. I think this was a classic example of British humour not travelling well.

However, many production companies aren’t deterred by the struggle to export humour and Philip Stark, the writer behind That 70s Show and the comedy film Dude Where’s My Car is about to produce a remake of the BBC classic Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. Time will tell how that goes but I can’t see Frank Spencer as anything but a dippy Englishman, can you?

Fawlty Towers was seized upon by our American cousins who attempted no less than three remakes under different names. The first, Chateau Snavely adapted the setting to a motel and was mildly successful, while the second remake, Amanda’s, did somewhat better in the ratings – but was by no means a runaway success – while the third, Payne was too dreadful to watch and was soon cancelled.

US remakes of The Office fared a lot better and two years after the last UK outing of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s series, NBC premièred The Office – An American Workplace which cast 40 Year Old Virgin star Steve Carell in the role of David Brent.

Men Behaving Badly was remade for US television but only managed to stay on air for one year while a remake of Man About the House became Three’s Company and with the late John Ritter in the lead role, the series ran for several seasons.

Another short-lived US version of a UK classic was The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin which was produced in 1983 with ex-Soap actor Richard Mulligan playing Leonard Rossiter’s character Reggie. Again though, it didn’t do anywhere near as well as the original did here and was a poor imitation really.

The remake of Steptoe and Son though transferred extremely well to its new Los Angeles location and new name, Sanford and Son. The remake premiered on NBC in 1972 and was then broadcast for ten years.

Red Dwarf was remade for NBC in 1992, but it was never actually broadcast. The show followed essentially the same plot as the first episode of the UK series, substituting American actors of course, but again, they couldn’t pull it off. Red Dwarf is a classic example of British humour; for instance, how could Lister’s obsession with curry and lager be adequately expressed as anything Americans can relate to? It’s very much a British ‘in-joke’.

One Foot In The Grave became Cosby in America and, as you might expect, the lead role of grumpy Hilton Lucas was played by Bill Cosby. Hilton’s long suffering wife, Ruth, was played by Phylicia Rashād and the series did well although to the naked eye, any resemblance between Victor Meldrew and Hilton Lucas was passing at best.

However, it isn’t just our comedies that get reworked by American television networks – our dramas do too. Life on Mars has been remade in America but the first attempt at exporting and reinventing the drama didn’t go well.

ABC relocated the setting from Manchester to LA and ditched most of the characters which kind of negated the point of the show in many ways. ABC quickly realised its mistake though. They changed the production team, relocated to New York and reinstated all the original characters before completely rewriting the script. They brought in Harvey Keitel, Gretchen Mol and Michael Imperioli and the entire thing was reshot.

This is the original trailer that ABC used as market research, and based on how it was received, they took the decision to rejig the whole show.

Long before Life on Mars, in 1975 the Americans used Upstairs Downstairs as the basis for their equivalent, Beacon Hill. The show did well initially; it had good reviews and drew a large audience, but as the series progressed, viewing figures dropped and the show was soon cancelled.

The Americans are not the only ones though who try to take a show and remake it to suit another country or culture; we’ve taken several US show formats and remade them to suit the British viewing audience. For instance, 2 Point 4 Children was based on the hit US comedy Roseanne and Who’s the Boss was based on America’s The Upper Hand.

We seem especially adept at nicking American game show formats and making them our own too. The US show Card Sharks became Play Your Cards Right, College Bowl became the hugely successful University Challenge and Family Feud turned into Family Fortunes here. Similarly, Hollywood Squares became Celebrity Squares and Match Game became Blankety Blank.

So what’s your opinion of why some shows do well when remade for the American market while others fail dismally? Let us know in the comments form below!