Tuesday, March 6, 2018

TWO FOR TUESDAY - NEW ZEALAND TO ZEELAND



For the first "Two for Tuesday" post of the month, we take a look at one of my new favorites (although it's been around since 2016) and how its remake can remain in the same dimension.

For Wikipedia:


(In '800 Words',) Erik Thomson plays George Turner, a recent widower who quits his job as a popular 800 word columnist for a top selling Sydney newspaper. Over the internet he buys a house on an impulse in a fictional New Zealand remote seaside town called Weld. He then has to break the news to his two teenage kids, Shay and Arlo (Melina Vidler and Benson Jack Anthony), who just lost their mother, and now face an even more uncertain future. But the colourful and inquisitive locals ensure Turner's dream of a fresh start does not go exactly to plan.


On 8 January 2018, 'Zomer in Zeeland' (translated: 'Summer in Zeeland') premiered on the Dutch channel SBS6. The show stars Daniƫl Boissevain as Sjors Mulder, Pip Pellens as his daughter Fenna Mulder and Tonko Bossen as his son Jurgen Mulder. The remake changes the setting to the Dutch province Zeeland, but follows the same storyline. Ironically, the country of New Zealand, where the original takes place, was named after Zeeland.

Both shows can exist in the same TV dimension because unlike the remake of 'Shameless', the names of the characters were all changed, and just as importantly, so were the locations.  It doesn't matter that the story lines remained the same because Toobworld has seen plot lines repeated - sometimes even in the same show!


BCnU!


3 comments:

Rob Buckley said...

Ooh, I didn't know about the remake - thanks!

Is the second season of 800words any better than the first? I sort of liked the first season, but the teenage daughter annoyed me so much I gave up afterwards.

Toby O'B said...

I can't speak for the first season as I didn't stumble on it until three episodes into the second. But I have read that it was a big improvement. I picked up on it quickly and it's become my current fave show. Ever have a show you want to live in? This is one for me.

Rob Buckley said...

The first season was nice (particularly since there were so many familiar Australian and NZ actors in it), but ambled a bit too much. Plus the idea he had to write exactly 800 words every column annoyed me. What if he made a mistake and it needed correcting? What if it got rewritten?

Basically, I reckoned the subs/copy editors did all the work and he got all the credit!