An impromptu essay

[iridescentglow]

I've been mulling over the news of an American remake of Skins and while I agree with the most common reactions ("but why not just watch the original??" and "but you can't show sex and drug-taking and violence on MTV!!"), I think I've figured out why the remake will never work for me.

Comments

[littlerhymes]

An American remake, simply by virtue of being American, guts the show of that central conceit.

Wow, really interesting post! I think it's true of most Western countries (and beyond) - that we're so immersed in US pop culture that products can't help but be in some way reactionary, consciously or not.

Trying to reverse that and re-engineer a UK product for US consumption is so fraught - in this case you put the point so well, it's actually a kind of negation of the thing itself!

[bexone]

the moral of the story is that american tv execs are, by and large, criminally stupid. they won't be able to figure out why this gets abysmal ratings, just like they weren't able to figure out why the american coupling go abysmal ratings, and they'll cancel it in half a season or less.

[cyclogenesis]

I've never seen Skins or GG but this was interesting. I like your brain.

[eolivet]

We're happy to watch American teenagers pontificate and spill their guts to the soundtrack of a maudlin alt-rock song, but it begins to feel contrived to watch British teens do the same.

Fascinating. I must say, this whole post puts into perspective why and how American remakes of British shows generally fail -- because you can't capture the tone of a nation. You can copy the characters word for word, but if you fail to adjust for your audience, it will fail

[lovely_noise]

Pretty fucking spot on, not only with Skins original vs. remake but also the whole nature of British shows compared to American ones. We seem to be internationally known for things like dry humour and sarcasm and irony, but there's a whole load of shows that have patently "normal" characters who they just affix these traits to without any care, whereas in reality these things affect the basic way I look at life, which makes it incredibly hard for someone not well-versed in British life to make an authentic representatiob.