AMERICAN EXPORTS

The TV landscape in America is full of remakes of previous shows - '87th Precinct', 'The New Addams Family', 'The Fugitive' - and most of them have to be relegated to alternate TV dimensions. Exceptions would include the remake of 'The Prisoner' with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellan, which was a continuation of the original scenario - but the shadowy powers running "the Village" had regrouped and set up shop elsewhere.

Sometimes it's the original - or in the case of Sherlock Holmes, the original and several remakes - that gets transferred. This happened with a one-shot drama called "The Strange World of Horace Ford", which was an episode of 'The Twilight Zone'. That version (starring Pat Hingle) is better known and seen more often than its predecessor which starred Art Carney. Therefore, it stays in Earth Prime-Time. As for the Great Detective, Jeremy Brett is the accepted portrayal of Holmes even though Ronald Howard, Douglas Wilmer, Peter Cushing and others came before him.

But when a show is remade in other countries, then the foreign versions get to share the same tele-planet. What helps of course is that even though they might share the same plotlines (especially those in the 'Law & Order' franchise), the characters have been changed enough to make them different from the originals... starting with their names.

(One exception - the American version of 'Being Human'. Even though it was now set in Boston rather than Bristol and the characters had different names - Sally instead of Annie, for example - it was still about a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost all living together. The ghost was still the female, the vampire still had the same kind of occupation, etc. It was too specifically similar to the original - and superior - British version, so it had to go.)

But no matter how many variations on 'The Office' and 'Ugly Betty' spring up around the world, they're all different enough, or their situations and character types are all so generic, that Earth Prime-Time can survive having them share the same global stage.

None of that is anything new for long-time visitors to this blog.  It's been brought up several times in the past here at Inner Toob, but it never hurts to have refreshers for those just joining the program already in progress. And since those two shows are the most often cited, I thought it might be nice if you got to see some other examples.

And thanks to this list you can:

"Ten Foreign Remakes Of TV Shows Very Different From The Original"

Enjoy! (And yeah, I know at least one of the video links has already expired. Sorry about that, Chief.)

BCnU!