According to The Guardian, the success of America’s remake of The Office has led to deals for more remakes of British comedies: Saxondale, Nighty Night, and The Mighty Boosh, these latter from Baby Cow Productions (imdb.com listing).
Differences in humor/humour aside (we Americans getting by with just the one letter U), I wonder how the American series model of multiple years of 22-episode seasons will work for these shows that usually have a dozen episodes total. The article mentions that three Fawlty Towers remakes failed. I didn’t think John Cleese’s British version with twelve episodes worked well. It was just the same formulaic sketch each time: crisis, hide it from the wife, try to hold in panic, and treat staff and some guests horribly. Trying to do that for a hundred episodes seems like an obvious problem.
But American television could use some good comedies now. Perhaps the U.K. will give us a chance, in the words of John Cleese’s other show, Monty Python, “for something completely different.” (However, the U.K. might prefer doing so with a full stop outside single quotation marks instead of a period inside double. I’m not sure if the “period inside double” happens in baseball, or in cricket.)
See also my earlier post: BBC comedies going to film.