Little Britain to become Little America?

I don’t have a good feeling about this.

THE hit comedy Little Britain is to be remade as an all-American show by the cutting-edge US broadcaster HBO.

Matt Lucas and David Walliams are to adapt their outrageous comic creations for American viewers under a deal with the cable channel behind the award-winning The Sopranos and Sex and the City.

The search is on to find the urban American equivalent of the schoolgirl nightmare Vicky Pollard and a suitable deep South locale for the only gay in the village. The duo will work with American writers and Simon Fuller, the British entrepreneur behind Pop Idol, will oversee the show.

I think Little Britain is brilliant, especially the masterful first season.  The second season was really funny as well.  The third season was slightly off, but the evolution of Vicky Pollard and the village around Daffyd, the only gay in the village (the joke is that he’s not gay and almost every else is) was pretty genius.

The thing is, a lot of it relies, and I mean relies, on British cultural taboos, interactions, etc.  Exagerrated British mannerisms become hysterical, a phrase or a word not funny in America becomes the lynchpin of an entire series of sketches.  I’m not sure that two guys who aren’t steeped in “Americanism” will be able to mine that same rich vein of social commentary.  I fear that it will be heavy, plodding and rely too much on what a Brit thinks America is, not what we actually are.

But.

If any two could pull it off, it’s these two.  What I hope is that they have a team of really funny writers born & raised in different parts of the U.S. (not just a bunch of Hollywood hacks or NYC know-it-alls), and then the boys act as wranglers for what is and isn’t funny, do character development, etc.  That could work.  Matt Lucas is a goddamned genius at wholly and completely becoming other people, and he’s really, really good with voices and accents.  I don’t doubt that with the right material, he could become any kind of stereotypical American he wants, from a Mexican migrant farm worker to a snooty, upper-crust New Englander.

If you have never watch Little Britian, you should grab the DVDs.  The shows are great and the extras are almost as funny.  There’s a lot of stuff from their earlier careers in there, including Matt doing Shirley Bassey...it’s brilliant.

Posted by JimK at 01:08 AM on September 02, 2006
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