For those of you who dont know the IT Crowd, it is a british TV show which sees Moss (Richard Ayoade), Roy (O'Dowd), two hopeless IT technicians, and their boss Jen (Katherine Parkinson) as they enter into a number of crazy and hillarious situations, that may be typically faced by nerds, such as meeting women and becoming one of the Countdown elites. The humour is incredibly British, and the behaviours of the character's is also very british. Particularly in britain at the moment, we have a love for nerd culture. In general, this show is a great british comedy.
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| A comparison between the two teams... http://annikarei.wordpress.com/2008/11/20/the-it-crowd-back-for-season-3/ |
So imagine my surprise, possibly even dismay, that America had decided to create an American version (OK i realise that it was created in 2007 I just havnt discovered it until now). If there is one thing I hate is the desire of america to take what is sucessful over here and try to make it their own. They ruined the TV show 'Life on Mars', one of my favourite ever television programmes and a show iconic of British culture in the 1970's, by doing that. So we downloaded the pilot. Maybe it wouldnt have irked me so much if they had been origional and changed the story to suit their audience. But they didnt. Almost every scene was exactly the same (apart from the shortening of a few scenes, presumably to accomodate the smaller attention span of the American brain). And the characters are nowhere near as well matched. Jessica St. Clair, who played Jen was far too sexual and coy, Joel McHale as Roy was far too overplayed and neat, and even Richard Ayode, who reprised his role as Moss, lacked that spark from the english version. It was almost like he had gotten bored of the same scenes and lines with actors who dont belong in their places.
Sometimes, I just wish America would leave british comedy well enough alone.
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