Made (Not) in America

Article originally published as Made (Not) in America on Blogcritics.

It seems like there’s nothing new any more. The number of old shows being rebooted has skyrocketed in the past year (Coach, The X-Files, The Muppet Show, Full House, Boy Meets World, and Twin Peaks, to name just a few). But while restarting canceled American series is the current fad, the lack of originality is not confined to this arena.

Not long before this trend, remaking foreign shows had been the rage, too. Some of the more famous examples are Homeland, which was adapted from the Israeli series Hatufim, American Idol, based on Britain’s Pop Idol, The Killing, from Denmark’s Forbrydelsen, The Office, which became The Office, and Gracepoint, a remake of Britain’s Broadchurch, which even starred the same actor. Less successful examples abound: Life On Mars, Skins, Kath & Kim, and multiple attempts at Coupling. Even the U.S. classic All in the Family can trace its roots overseas, as it owes its DNA to the UK’s Till Death Do Us Part, not to mention Sanford and Son!

Although conventional reboots tend to copy the source material pretty directly, with series of foreign origin creators often get a little more creative. Americans don’t tend to watch other countries’ broadcasts (although the rest of the world watches our shows), and those not in English acquire even smaller U.S. followings. When American shows adapt, it tends to be with an eye toward bringing the series in line with “our own sensibilities,” or whatever executives think those are this week.

This has me wondering: what if other countries did the same thing? What if Lost was reset in Scandinavia? Or 24 in the Middle East?

So, without further ado (note: yes, these play on stereotypes, and no offense is intended.)

Lost: Denmark Style ~ A bunch of strangers are thrown together on an island. They don’t know each another, and their actions are steeped in mystery. The plot is often dense and confusing. Come to think of it, with darker lighting and slightly less humor (like, say, removing Hurley), the remake would be pretty much the same as the American version.

Law & Order: UK Style ~ This police and courtroom procedural is just like the American version, except with powdered wigs and fewer episodes per season. Each week, officers of the law work together to put a common criminal away. I don’t think anyone has done yet, right? I’d better run a Google search to make sure. (Oh, and fewer guns involved!)

Grey’s Anatomy: Mexico Style ~ At a hospital, a group of unnaturally hot doctors spend more time sleeping with one another than treating patients. Some of their number die in freaky, unbelievable accidents, and others learn of unknown siblings or hidden affairs at inconvenient times. Actually, just add a filter and some more dramatic music, and they can reuse the footage from ABC.

24: Israel Style ~ A single-minded hero goes after the enemies of the state, who are portrayed as flat, one-dimensional villains. Politicians get in the way, but the writers know what the viewers really want to see is action and torture in the name of patriotism. So it would differ from our 24 because, oh, um…

Hmm. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

All kidding aside, though, there are as many differences as similarities, if not more so. When Everybody Loves Raymond was sold internationally, changes had to be made to the material in order to make the laughs translate. Can you believe that the Russian writers didn’t even understand what a restaurant booth was because they don’t have them there?

American dramas tend to sell better than comedies overseas. Everyone can understand deep emotions, laughter, tears, and romance because these are universal concepts. Humor is much more subjective, and much of what we watch contains pop culture and societal references that aren’t echoed in other lands. If you’ve ever spent any time with British sitcoms, you’ll see what I mean. You may enjoy them, but it’s pretty obvious there are layers going on that we just don’t get with our frame of reference. Or, at least most of us don’t.

Globalization has started to blur or erase these lines. Every country has internet and every country has cell phones, at least to some extent. Developed, first-world nations have similar life styles, with shared technology and products. We are becoming more homogenous overall.

And yet, I Survived A Japanese Game Show, in which citizens of the U.S. underwent crazy challenges that would seem run-of-the-mill on Asian television, didn’t play well here. Residents of a country share a history that built world views a certain way and drives interests. As much as we may think we’re shaping our national conversation, its shaping us, too. People like the familiar, and if we’ve always done one thing a certain way and some place else has done it differently, there’s a fundamental chasm that must be bridged before understanding can happen.

Why bring this up now? On recommendation, I recently checked out Smartling, a translation software company, and they have a very cool service for businesses and websites. (No, they're not paying me to say this.) Connecting with people the world over has never been more important. Even more than finding a way to translate a humorous point of view, it's vital that the customers you're communicating with understand the words you are saying. Smartling can help with this, and as we get more and more global, this is definitely the type of help we all need in order to bring our services and products to a variety of places and people. They help drive this incredibly pertinent conversation.

I look forward to international television enjoyed the world over, but we have a long way to go before we really reach that point. For now, American studios rarely even give us the chance to get used to foreign styles, preferring to just remake a solid story with a bend towards what is already popular and known in this country. I don’t think TV is the medium that will bring us together, but will be very helpful to spread artistic masterpieces once that common mindset is found.

For now, I’d just settle for BBC America airing more than a small number of British programs and more foreign networks joining my cable package. If our producers can’t find a new idea, let’s try looking else elsewhere in the world, not just for inspiration, but to actually see what other people think. I think this is the easiest path back to freshness, at least for awhile. And it would do some of us good to read a few more subtitles.

Was GRACEPOINT Worth It?

Article first published as Was 'Gracepoint' Worth It? on Blogcritics.



WARNING: If you intend to, but have not yet, watched the full first seasons of Broadchurch and Gracepoint, you’ll probably want to bookmark this column and come back after you’ve seen them. Major spoilers are contained within. You’ve been warned!

When FOX decided to remake the British series Broadchurch, starring the same lead actor no less, my first thought was, “Why?” The original is in English and was produced recently, a second season not even out yet. It’s also brilliant, a compelling, twisty drama with terrific acting and a gripping story. Now that all of Gracepoint has aired and a second season is a pipe dream, we are left with the question, was this project worth viewers’ time? Spoiler alert: my answer is no, definitely not.

The first thing that strikes me about Gracepoint‘s pilot is just how similar it is to Broadchurch. The producers deviated very minimally from the source material. The problem with that is, every time an element goes head-to-head in an obvious comparison, Broadchurch wins. Every single time. Why try to copy a successful series if you can’t do it better or offer a fresh viewpoint?

A large part of the inferiority stems from the cast. I’m not talking about David Tennant, who overcomes bad hair coloring and being forced to speak in an American accent to give us a performance that is essentially as good as when he played the role the first time. He’s a reliable, consistent, impressive actor. I’m also not talking about Anna Gunn. I love Olivia Colman and I wouldn’t say Gunn is better, but she’s as good and Gunn proves here that her Breaking Bad gig will be followed by a long, respectable career. Pretty much everyone else, though, especially the victim’s family, just do not stack up to the originals.

Had I not seen Broadchurch, I would likely have loved Gracepoint from the start. It’s a solidly-written story, and as I mentioned, the leads are terrific. The case has lots of mystery surrounding it, and it’s like an East Coast version of The Killing, a series I adore. Any cringe worthy moments in the early installments are purely colored by my memory of the first edition.

As the season unfolds, I do get drawn into Gracepoint. It doesn’t make many major changes, but it does have a couple of extra hours (being ten episodes instead of eight) to fill, so a bit of layering is added in. Around the mid-point, it starts to look like it may veer off entirely and be it’s own beast, and that gets me excited. I enthusiastically told a friend who was holding out to give it a chance. This experiment may end up being a good one to watch after all.

Then I arrive at this week’s season finale. From the start of the series, we had been promised a killer different than the one in Broadchurch. There is foreshadowing in earlier episodes that this will not be the case, but I assume the writers are being misleading, not truly setting up the reveal. Halfway through the finale, Gracepoint had returned to a nearly carbon-copy of Broadchurch and the same perpetrator is arrested.

After that, there is a big twist in that the person who is charged didn’t actually kill the boy. But he’s still guilty of criminal acts and deserves to rot in jail. I guess this is how Gracepoint gets around the “same killer” charge, but it feels like a technicality more than an actual change, just broadening the circumstances surrounding the death a little more, rather than making it drastically different.

I do believe that if Gracepoint were to get a second season, there is the possibility to overcome the comparison issue. The fact that Danny’s best friend accidentally does the deed, his child molester father is (nobly?) taking the blame, and his mother is covering up the true crime are all rich veins to tap. Danny’s mother’s partner clearly grows suspicious of the outcome at the end, threatening to put fixing his life on hold, though he definitely should not, to further pursue the case. But since the running time of the season is almost out at this point, there’s no time to really explore any of that, and Gracepoint ends on a semi-cliffhanger that will most likely never be resolved because the ratings are pretty bad.

Without this further exploration, most interestingly Ellie (Gunn) hiding things from Carver (Tennant), Gracepoint doesn’t have a lot to set it apart from Broadchurch. If the original had been subtitled, one may argue Americans are too lazy to read them. If the shows went completely separate ways in their second years, a case could be made that they really are different stories. If we lived in a pre-Internet age and Americans didn’t have easy access to the original version, it would be somewhat, flimsily arguable to make our own, homegrown, series. As it stands now, though, Gracepoint is an inferior copy of an easily obtainable show with very few significant differences. So what was the point?

No official word on Gracepoint‘s renewal has been released, but I’m pretty sure it’s not coming back, and it does not really deserve to do so.

Broadchurch season two premieres in February on BBC America. Please check it out.

GRACEPOINT A Very Familiar Place

Article first published as GRACEPOINT Review on Seat42F.

FOX’s GRACEPOINT is a ten-episode murder mystery based on the British series Broadchurch. Starring David Tennant (Doctor Who) as Alec Hardy Emmett Carver and Anna Gunn (Breaking Bad) as Ellie Miller, the duo investigate the body of a boy found on a beautiful beach in a small, tranquil, formerly crime-less town. The suspect pool is large, and the members of the community are all affected by the tragedy in differing ways, often making the case difficult.

The biggest obstacle GRACEPOINT faces is that a number of potential viewers have already seen the original, which recently aired on BBC America in the United States, and is currently available on DVD, iTunes, and Amazon streaming. The opening scene is almost exactly the same. Tennant starred in both, playing the same role, and much of the pilot follows the source material faithfully. The writers have promised a different killer and GRACEPOINT will fill an additional two hours of running time, so it won’t be a complete clone, but the parallels are numerous and easy to draw.

By comparison, GRACEPOINT loses in every head-to-head matchup. It’s a shame Tennant isn’t allowed to keep his accent and his hair now looks unnaturally tinged red. While Broadchurch features an omnipresent creepy tone, sort of like The Killing, GRACEPOINT goes in and out of that, mixing a modern, typical style with a unique one. A number of actors in the new version, especially Michael Pentildea as the victim’s father, Mark Solano, are inferior, if not outright horrible.

That being said, had I not seen Broadchurch (which filmed a second, yet unaired season recently), I would probably like GRACEPOINT quite a bit. Gunn and Tennant are both fantastic performers, and the couple of instances where Gunn slips back into Skylar-mode are charming, rather than distracting. The story is well set up, and the various personalities that make up the cast, including Kevin Zegers (Gossip Girl) as reporter Owen Burke and Nick Nolte (Luck, Warrior) as the boys’ mentor Jack Reinhold, are both interesting and plenty suspicious.

GRACEPOINT succeeds because it balances the crime investigation with the family pathos and the drama among the townspeople. There is an emotional core that is just as central to the series as the question of who killed Danny. This allows the audience to relate to the varied players and become invested in the saga, hopefully enough to tune back in on a weekly basis for a couple of months.

I applaud FOX for trying this out. While they have allowed Sleepy Hollow, The Following, and 24 to do shorter-than-normal seasons, this is the first cable-style series on the broadcast networks. It’s gritty and realistic, extremely serial, and the writing and characters are complex. This is a departure from the standard procedural junk that mucks up the airwaves, and is not only bold for one of the Big Four, but, for the most part, worthy of praise. They would have been a bit better off just airing the British version, but since I can’t see FOX or its peers doing that, this will have to do.

The biggest question I have is, can it iron out the rough patches as it goes along? If GRACEPOINT corrects its mistakes and minimizes the role of those in the cast who don’t really cut it as actors, it could find a fan base and be something that lasts a few years (though not too long, considering the premise). But, based on the shaky start, this has to clean up quick. And, should it do well enough to earn a second season, it needs to stick to the strengths of the franchise, not just presenting a second case the following year, refusing to fall into the regular TV traps. GRACEPOINT can be special if it wants to be badly enough and the network allows it.

GRACEPOINT premieres Thursday, October 2^nd on FOX.