One of the first nights I had the house to myself, I did what most people would do. Got naked in the spa. Rid of parents for the weekend and glimpsing to my future of my own house and lifestyle, I was having a fabulous Saturday evening. That was until I went to go back into the house. The latch on the door had somehow snapped across and locked, and I was stranded, naked and alone, with only a towel to shield any further embarrassment.
A quick dash across the road to my neighbour’s house to retrieve the spare key (I had to await her explosion of laughter to cease first) got me back into my house, relieved. Though my cheeks flushed with embarrassment, I could still see the funny side of the story. My friends thought it funny too; as did my mum, who announced it to the table of police she was dining with when she called me with her nightly “how are you coping?” check-ups. Let’s not even delve into my catastrophic cooking disasters, but I did, amazingly, pull off a Stroganoff one night.
Taking the piss out of yourself seems to be an English/Australian form of comedy. While Americans have pulled off parodying others, self-parody seems to be a foreign form of comedy to them. While British humour is dependent on mockery of oneself or satirising typical British life, Aussie humour seems to be a mix of British and American comedy traits. And with the ever-demanding market for new TV shows and hopes of television success, as well as American networks cutting the corners and adapting shows, books and films rather than creating them from other countries, can their essences ever really translate?
At a party (ironically, a pimps and whores one), I found myself immersed in a discussion over similar things. I was chatting to a guy who had recently spent some time in London, and was a die hard comedy fan. He was startled that for ten pounds he could watch a class act comedy gig that would cost triple or even more in Australia, and for less laughs. Noting these London acts would have you in stitches over silly anecdotes of their lives; it goes to show that the funniest things in life are those that can happen to anyone. He also mentioned American sit-coms, and how Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men never makes fun of himself to make jokes, but always at the expense at others. The show is funny, but it’s the kind of comedy I call “funny ha ha.” Don’t get me wrong, I love the likes of Friends and Will and Grace, but all these sit-coms share similar “funny ha ha” traits. Good for some giggles, but it doesn’t particularly stay with you. I can’t often recall or quote the jokes that made me laugh at the time I watched the show.
Basil Fawlty's slapstick charm or "don't mention the war!" quirks are funny nearly forty years on, Monty Python's "dead parrot" sketch leaves me crying with laughter every time. Good humour is that which lasts forever. We know as a culture that to be funny, your appearance, your sexual appeal and your composure are redundant. If you have to look ridiculous to be funny then it's done, it's all part of the charm. Many American shows seem too concerned with their characters being "cool" and attractive to really allow themselves to be funny.
I’ve sat watching Peter Kay (a particularly funny English comedian, in my opinion, who makes jokes of everyday British life) with people who aren’t English, and they’ve sat beside me (by this point, I have tears streaming down my face) looking bewildered. “How is it funny?” They have asked. My answer is always “maybe you have to be English to understand.” It seems British and Aussie comedy seems to go over Americans heads. They simply just don’t get it.
We’ve grown to love books like Belle de Jour, Bridget Jones’ Diary and anything by Nick Hornby, where the characters are placed in situations that are crying with laughter funny, and often downright embarrassing. Poor Bridget and her blue soup or granny knickers, or Belle’s frank and hilarious attitude to sex; and sneaky narrative-only jokes to the audience while she’s with one of her clients. These books have been adapted to the screen, whether in film or television, but the difference is they are created again for the same markets and written by British people. The humour remains on the same wavelength, and the adaptations have managed to retain the essence of the original piece.
UK made favourites that have fallen into Australian cult followings like The Inbetweeners are doomed to be made into American versions. UK website Digital Spy reported that the American television channel ABC has secured the rights to create a pilot episode. To anyone who is a fan of the sixth formers who aren’t quite cool, and aren’t total prats, but fittingly “Inbetweeners”, you will be as upset as I am. It just won’t work. These boys are iconically British; whether Will is being a pompous twat, Simon is confessing his love for Carli, Jay is doing things that should never be done in an old people’s home or Neil is simply plodding along. The American market will want the glitz and glamour of the likes of Gossip Girl and the OC, and watching rich Manhattan socialites punching fishes, getting drunk off gin or swapping shoes with a homeless man simply won’t be as funny to watch. Plus, it wouldn’t be half as believable.
Skins too. Beloved, Skins, that has definitely set the benchmark of what teenagers look for in a television show. Partly because it’s written by people our age, and partly because it doesn’t cover up nor over-dramatise the stuff teenagers get up to. This creative satire on British teenagers doesn’t make excuses for anyone, and Rosemary Newell, Channel 4’s head of scheduling says the show is popular with audiences because it doesn’t preach. “Oh, if only American shows had half its guts.” – Entertainment Weekly reviewed the British version. The show’s brutal portrayal of teenage lives is what captures the show’s authenticity, and it’s ever-daring with their storylines that still remain believable. Much of the part of this is that these characters are British people, speaking to a British audience, who are going through similar situations in their own day to day lives.
Channel 4, the UK channel that aired Skin’s head of acquisitions Jeff Ford says that NBC is planning to make an adaptation of Father Ted, and if they can do that, he couldn't see why Skins wouldn't have been successful in the States. I don’t even want to contemplate how terrible an American Father Ted would be. Perhaps luckily for us, Skins US did flop, the characters were jazzed up with terrible names and thrown into the arena of American high school politics. The token "gay" kid, the outsiders and the weirdos had lost the charm that the British version captured, and instead it felt as though they were merely placed there for merit, not reason.
Perhaps a reason Skins US did flop was that the story lines were much less confronting or “watered down” to appeal to a broadcast network. This immediately changed how audiences connected with the show and its characters - it's ability to be real; with story lines that projected the British version to its iconic status. Strip away the confronting scenes, add in a few over the top unrealistic characters, and a hell of a lot of bad writing, and you’ve got an American version, but I’m sure, a much smaller audience.
While adaptations may be successful in their own countries it can’t be denied that the essence of the original show is always lost. Consider The Office, and what happened to that. I cringed when I watched the American pilot, probably because it was a complete rip off of the British pilot and done not nearly as well. I was relieved to find out they quickly dropped the idea of mimicking the exact scripts in future episodes but still can’t enjoy it in the way I can cringe at Ricky Gervais’ heartbreakingly funny portrayal of David Brent. While the show has been wildly successful in the States, and has won Emmy awards, and has found an audience in Australia, it still doesn’t seem to quite capture the tone and the humour that was intended by Gervais’ and Merchant’s original. To me, it seems this show’s success is merely a fluke, considering the amount of adaptations that swiftly flop.
The American adaptation of Australia’s iconic Kath and Kim flopped. The show couldn’t capture the ocker attitudes of the women that Australians love to watch so much. And why should it? It’s an Aussie show, with Aussie characters, written for an Aussie audience. Selma Blair and Molly Shannon may be extremely talented comediennes but this stream of humour was inevitably, never going to translate to an American adaptation. Tim Goodman, a reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle agreed and said Americans had to apologise to Australia, and the NBC version was “jaw-droppingly” awful.
It’s all down to context. These shows are designed to appeal to a particular culture, with similar sense of humours and characters that are common to these places. Taking a clearly British or Australian show and throwing it into an American setting is beyond difficult to do. The characters, jokes and situations just won’t translate – and in my opinion, when you strip away all of that, the soul of the show has gone. If you can’t do it well, don’t do it at all.
Perhaps it’s because there’s something less glamorous about British and Australian comedy and something much more genuine, but I don’t believe that kind of humour can ever properly translate to America. Their parodies are often of celebrities and particular stereotypes, where our favourite TV shows, films and books showcase everyday people and lives.
The only way I know to be funny is to give up myself, and to be vulnerable for a few laughs on the account of myself and my friends. It’s how I was brought up, and it’s the extreme vulnerability and sillyness that makes British people British, and funny, according to travel writer Bill Bryson (who, ironically is American, but has spent most of his adult life living in and loving the UK) .
It’s not making a fool of yourself, but simply embracing who you are and being proud of that. And parodying someone else is just as acceptable if you can do it well.
Maybe it’s best that Americans leave our favourites for us to have, rather than ruining them with their remakes and ultimately leaving distaste in our mouths of the American entertainment spectacle.
Whether it’s when the first time I shaved my legs I concentrated my efforts only to the front of my shins, leaving the backs natural as ever, or my police officer father spotted me (on duty) in my car parked at a secluded part of the beach with my then boyfriend, or my damn luck with pens at work resulted in a completely saturated ink stained thigh for over a week, it’s all part of life, and living, and really, laughing.
Life is too short to not take the piss out of yourself, and perhaps while we’ll cringe at the American half arsed attempts to do so, we can cherish our Brit and Aussie shows that are so close to our hearts, and so close to the real people in our lives.
Ya bellends.
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