Every show ever made can be improved. But that is completely irrelevant to marketing and tailoring a product for a specific audience.

Funny, your posts have implied the opposite. There has always been a sense of superiority for British productions. Hollywood bashing is rapant and quite often, when an American is cast as a Brit, there is a backlash. Yet, we have had a flood of UK actors here. Sorry, your comment doesn't hold up.

Yes, thank you. Listening to his/her's rants you'd think that everyone here but him/her watches Two and a Half Men and Life According to Jim.

US audiences aren't generally as dumb as you think they are, Lastdaysofrain, and televised dreck is a universal constant, not something that's limited only to America...

Nikke Finke says the pilot didn't get picked up. I'm almost disappointed, because now that this whole debacle has occurred I was interested in seeing the final product, if only in a rubbernecking kind of way. Much like "Clerks", I hate when TV pilot remakes are commissioned and I don't get to see them.

I just read the pilot.

It's very, very easy to see why it didn't get picked up.

Horrible, just horrible.

Argh. I've been looking for both the script and the pilot online for a few months and I haven't found anything yet. I'm morbidly curious.

Since this thread already exists and seems to be somewhat active with fans, I'll ask here...

Since the DVD set came out this week I decided to check this show out. Luckily it's been playing on BBCA in the middle of the night so I've been recording it to the ol' DVR. I watched the first 2 eps last night and it just doesn't look quite right. They're showing it widescreen but it looks stretched. IMDB and the review here list it as being originally widescreen (1.78:1) but I don't know what's up.

Has anyone else watched it on BBCA? Are they maybe stretching a full frame version?

I hate that stretch effect (that is so prevalent on cable HD channels), it just makes everything look bad. Maybe I'm crazy though.

I don't know about BBCA, but the original is definitely widescreen.

Simon Pegg has kind of a wide face, so maybe that's fooling you.

Wait until you get to season 2. Daisy doesn't look quite so stretched



-Doc

I've seen it! I've always thought she looked good.

Yeah, season 1 on BBCA has always looked weird. Season 2 is fine, though.

She had a child just prior to series one, so that explains her "glow" (that and the soft focus prevailant in so many british tv shows), and she had a definite primary school teacher "cute" vibe going in series 2. By the "Skip to the End" documentary on disc 3 of the set, however, I was smitten



-Doc

One of the cast members of the aborted Spaced US remake posted a few clips of the pilot online. WARNING: It's very awful.

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Thank God that Pilot wasn't picked up.

Jeez, what an abomination. I wish I could go back and unwatch that mess.

i can understand remaking a successful and awesome British tv series, but to mimick dialogue and scenes almost to a tee and do it that badly is abysmal. at least use the idea, intersperse pop culture gags, but same characters doing the same thing is just wrong.

They did the same exact thing with the first episode of the American Office.

It's unnecessary, but it's not awful.

And the U.S. version of Coupling

Right, it gave a way for people who knew the British version to see something familiar in a new way and gave a way for people who knew nothing about the British version to get to know a new show.

I love Spaced, and an American version would have always been inferior, but this isn't horrible (hyperbole on the internet is the worst thing ever!). I think they would have gone in a slightly different direction after the first episode, just like The Office did over here, given that the characters and situations aren't exact duplicates of the original.

Woll hullo Bri-uhn...

While the US version of "The Office" kept to the spirit of the original it succeeded because the character portrayals by the actors were their own. A US version of "Spaced" would seem to be a difficult prospect to pull off in a similar manner.

Why? It's the same idea, and they were already showing, in these 4 minutes of material, that the characters weren't exact mimics of their counterparts.

Saw the clip. Looked okay. I don't get all the hate.

And they didn't really stand out either.

Granted the US "The Office" pilot followed the original show verbatim but do you really see the characters in the US version of "Spaced" branching out like the US version of "The Office?"

The US Office at least understood it had to mimic the UK's show style. This pilot, however, instead of mimicking the UK Spaced's hyperkinetic shooting and editing style is just shot like a lazy sitcom.

The "what do you paint?" montage is a good example. In the UK version, each artistic "subject" is given an editing and visual style of its own. It's a meticulously crafted 30 second segment. In the US version, the montage is just cuts to the exact same shot with the actor emoting.

Here's the UK Version of the first scene in that clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYCVfd4b8-Y