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.

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