From Slough to Scranton: "The Office" takes a dive

It’s taken me a day or three to get around to writing this up, but I shalln’t put it off any longer. On Thursday evening I managed to watch the first episode of the U.S. version of the BBC’s Golden Globe-winning comedy, "The Office". Straight to the point: It really was a clone of the Brit version - right down to about 90% of the gags, and my wife and I were playing "spot the American version of Tim, Gareth, Dawn, etc." to stay amused. (To be fair, the first episode is intended to be a close remake of the original; after that, the U.S. show’s writers are supposed to create original American material for the new show.) Still, even with Ricky Gervais, the show's original UK creator, helping with this version, I don't think that’s going to save it. The odds are that it will follow the calamitous U.S. version of "Coupling" – another failed NBC attempt to import a UK comedy idea - down the tubes.

Inevitably, it seems, the critics in the States quickly panned the show. (See this example from a Slate critic, titled "What have you done with my office?: NBC body-snatches the BBC series"; it's pretty typical.) It seems that American TV critics love most things British - after all, British telly is supposed to be the best in the world (though some HBO execs might take issue with that.) I should point out here that, even though as a general principle I dislike U.S. remakes of successful comedies, I was not completely opposed to this particular example (maybe just 80% opposed). After all, it stars the often-hilarious "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" alum Steve Carell as the Ricky Gervais/David Brent clone. And the show is set in Scranton, PA, a Godawful town that draws a guffaw right from the start. Nevertheless, the show still starts out with two strikes against. Why is this? Dana Stevens of Slate rejects the notion of simple Anglophilic snobbery. Instead, for those loyal fans of the UK original on BBC America:

It's love. The Office's fans love their show with a fierce conviction, and I doubt most of them will take kindly to the idea of simply transplanting the alienated crew of Wernham Hogg paper company to new digs in Scranton, Pa. For those still in mourning for the BBC series (which wrapped up earlier this year with a two-hour special), seeing the roles already recast with American actors is like waking up to find your beloved has been abducted, Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style, and replaced by a random stranger.

But of course there's more to it than that - and yes, snobbery is part of it as well. If Slate is one bastion of Anglophile critics in the States, NPR is surely another. I heard reviews on NPR's Morning edition (click here for the web feed) and later Thursday on Fresh Air. Both reviewers made a similar point that old clones - such as "All in the Family" and "Sanford and Son" - worked in the U.S. because almost nobody over here had seen or even heard of the originals, so no-one had a chance to compare the original with the clone. Now the critics can compare much more easily - unlike most of America, they tend to be avid viewers of BBC America, for example - and the U.S. versions always seem to suffer in comparison. This seems to be at least a contributing factor in why more recent sitcom and drama remakes (including "Coupling", "Cracker" and apparently even a US "Fawlty Towers", which I didn't know about) bomb almost every time. Finally, add in the fact that there's just some je ne sais quoi about Brit comedy that usually doesn't survive the translation, and the "bombs" just get bigger and bigger ...

On a related note, Fox has just started a sketch comedy series called "Kelsey Grammer Presents: The Sketch Show", 9:30 p.m. EST Sunday. It's based on a popular British show of the same name (without the "Kelsey Grammer presents" bit). And it even includes one of the stars of the British show - a bit like having Simon Callow on "American Idol" or Anne Robinson on "The Weakest Link". This one seems to have flown under the radar - maybe it'll work. And it's true that U.S. clones seem to work better with reality TV and (maybe) sketch comedy, but not with sitcoms. Now why is that? hmmmm....

Brits on Diane Rehm

I noticed an interesting development on the Diane Rehm show this week. Every Friday morning the ever-excellent Rehm (broadcasting from Washington, DC's WAMU public radio station) has a weekly news roundup, where she invites three prominent political journalists to discuss the major issues of the week. Usually these journalists are fairly well balanced politically, with everyone from left-leaning journos such as James Fallows and The Nation's David Corn right across the spectrum to conservative ideologues such as William Kristoll and the occasionally foaming-at-the-mouth Tony Blankley. But (as far as I know) most of the guests have been American. Well, not so much any more. Recently I've noticed an increasing number of English accents on the show - including the BBC's Katy Kay and UPI's Martin Walker, who's become a regular.

Then on this week's program, perhaps for the first time, two out of the three guests were British: Martin Walker (again) and John Parker, Washington bureau chief for The Economist (perhaps he was there to fill the conservative slot normally occupied by Blankley, even though The Economist's brand of economic conservatism is a good ball park away from the Washington Times's more rabid orientation). It was particularly noteworthy this week since the news of the week had been dominated not by a major international story such as Iraq or the Middle East, but by the peculiarly American circumstances surrounding the Terri Schiavo saga. Is this, then, another example of the Brits being given increasing license to interpret current events to a (fairly elite) inside-the-Beltway and national American audience, on even the touchiest American matters? Could you imagine two French or German or Chinese journalists being on the Friday roundup at the same time (unless it was a special "global perspectives" or "foreign viewpoints" type of show, which this week's wasn't)? How long before it's three out of three Brits on Diane Rehm? Meanwhile, this is all a long, long way from local TV news - where most Americans get their news - where it's still rare to hear an accent that's not solidly fake-mid-Western.

What will America make of Chuck & Camilla's Big Day?

The Guardian reports that the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles will be televised on April 8 ... or not quite. Apparently the civil part of the ceremony, held in Windsor town hall, will be strictly private, but there will also be a "religious service of prayer and dedication afterwards in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle," and this "will be broadcast to the nation and around the world." It will be interesting to see what U.S. audiences make of this wedding - if they pay any attention at all. This is certainly a million miles from Charles' first Big Day - when he married Diana Spencer in 1981. That occasion was an excuse for some serious fairytale-like awe generated by Americans for their quaint and wonderful British "cousins." Since then the whole issue of Charles' dalliances has become more than a little sordid. Will the U.S. media frame this Big Day as a tacky affair or will they fall into line with the whole royal pomp and circumstance/Ye Olde Englishe fairytale thing? And to what extent, if any, will the U.S. media take their cue from their "cousins" in the UK?

British film - doing rather well?

Since I'd mentioned "Bride and Prejudice" in my previous post, I thought I'd bring up something I'd noted in mediaville: that British film is doing rather well at the UK box office - 45% better, according to The Guardian, which reports: "Box-office takings for the top 20 British films totalled £176m [$320 million] in 2004, compared with £121m in 2003. And the number of UK films taking more than £3m at the box office jumped to 16 in 2004, from eight in 2003."

The success was largely due to "big-budget co-productions such as "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", as well as the popularity of smaller films such as "Shaun of the Dead", "Bride and Prejudice" and "Layer Cake". Among the other strong Brit performers was "King Arthur" (£7m), "Thunderbirds" (£5m), and "Alfie" (almost £5m). Many of these films have also done well internationally (though "Thunderbirds" and "Alfie" kind of bombed in the States). Also, on closer inspection, most of these films - including "Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason" - were really co-productions (mostly with the U.S.), so I wonder just how "British" this British resurgence really is. On the other hand, British film has often been criticized for being too insular and too small-minded. This was expecially so in the 1950s.

I guess my thoughts on this are this: If there is to be any sustained resurgence of the British film industry, it has to be on global - and by global I mean American - terms. The American connection - and American financing - is what gave British film international exposure in the late '50s & '60s, post-"Bridge on the River Kwai," and that's what can do it again. That's not to say that British films can ignore the rest of the world - they can't and shouldn't. But, at least for most of the time, they do have to recognize Hollywood as the prime locus of power through which postcolonial British cultural values (as seen in their movies) need to be refracted before widespread reception by the rest of the world. In other words, for "British" films to really be seen as successful internationally, they have to pass muster with the Americans first. I think "Bride and Prejudice," "Bridget Jones" and last year's "Love, Actually" are good examples of that. Still, as long as there's some room left for "small" British films, and wonderful "insular" films such as "Vera Drake", I can live with that.

Poco globalization - Brit style

Great posting by Doctor Media about Daljit Dhaliwal and other UK-Indian presenters. Britain's been trying to push this postcolonial globalization thing for some years, with varying degrees of success - and not just with BBC/ITV News' rainbow spectrum of presenters. What about Prime Minister Tony Blair's continuing outreach efforts to Africa and Palestine? Then we have London being pushed hard as the primus inter pares of global cities (clearly seen in London's current Olympic bid for 2012); there was British Airways' controversial new paint schemes, that had their tail fins looking like a Putamaya CD cover (though that didn't go down so well). And even British movies are becoming less insular and more cross-cultural - think Gurinder Chadha's latest work, "Bride & Prejudice" (she'd previously directed the international hit, "Bend it Like Beckham"). Of course Britain - and especially London - is still very much a global entity, thanks to the powerful trading and communication links inherited from the days of empire. What the Brits have been trying hard to do is to downplay the imperial connotations of "Britishness" of their institutions of communication (from British Airways to Reuters to the BBC) while still trying to retain the positive attributes these institutions connote globally by being associated with that small island off the Northwest coast of Europe. One question for the U.S. is this: How much of UK media's appeal to Americans is due to admiration of purely British values, and how much is it due to the UK's apparent ability to hook into some global values more effortlessly than is the case with Bush's America?

Sir Howard Stringer, an American Brit, at Sony

The New York Times reports on the unexpected ascent of Sir Howard Stringer to the top job of chairman/chief executive of the Japanese Sony Corporation, one of the globe's largest media companies. In a special "Man in the News" piece in today's paper, Bill Carter of the Times provides an admiring overview of this Welsh-born, Oxford-educated Brit who left Britain for America as a young man, found himself drafted during the Vietnam War, then returned to begin a shining career in the U.S. media, first at CBS and later with Sony's U.S. operations. Along the way he got a knighthood from the queen, and he still splits his time between New York and England.

Carter's piece notes how Stringer's very British persona may well have helped him considerably as he made his way through the U.S. corporate world. Even during his most controversial corporate action, the evisceration of CBS's news division in the late 1980s,

Sir Howard was never widely blamed for all that bloodletting .... The main explanation for that accomplishment, cited by associates of Sir Howard, then and now, is his most outstanding management skill: his personal charm. Certainly few network newspeople had ever been told they were losing their jobs with so much sensitivity - and in such an elegant British accent.

Stringer epitomizes a key point that characterizes not only external British media operations (such as the BBC) that operate within the United States, but also British individuals who operate within the U.S. media system: their ability to ingratiate themselves with and be accepted by their American hosts while still maintaining a veneer of "classy" foreign cultural independence that sets them apart from other, "more" foreign countries and people. Like a good drama or sit-com, Brits in America are familiar enough to be comfortable with, but just different enough to seem exciting, distinctive, and (usually) classy. Bill Carter notes that at 63, "Sir Howard has built his long record of success on shrewd adaptation to circumstances." You could say something similar about British media's infiltration of the United States.

The Independent's impact in the U.S.

The left-of-center UK newspaper Independent on Sunday (the Sunday sister paper of The Independent) reports new evidence that British Prime Minister Tony Blair committed his country to supporting a Bush invasion of Iraq "as early as April 2002, when the Prime Minister met President Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas" - and almost a year before the attack actually started.

The Independent is one of the many UK media outlets that has substantially increased its U.S. presence in recent years – and especially since the runup to the Iraq war. Its message has been spread primarily via the media channel of the World Wide Web – both directly, through its own independent.co.uk web site, and indirectly, through numerous U.S.-based blogs and independent news sites such as common dreams and truthout (which is where the Blair-Bush story mentioned above was republished).

It’s clear to me that the post-9/11 era has spurred an unprecedented desire in Americans for international news. However, the events following 9/11 – and in particular the buildup to the Iraq war and the war itself – have also seriously polarized U.S. public opinion. And with that polarization came a drift away from mainstream media (at least among left-leaning, technology-savvy groups in society). In contrast, the right-wing seemed well relatively served during the Iraq War – after all the mainstream media had effectively been neutered (thanks to the loss of a liberal opposition in Congress with which the media could index its coverage – something I’ll come back to later). Those on the left or of an anti-war persuasion – concentrated in the big cities of the Northeast and the West Coast – felt that they had "nowhere left to go" in the U.S. media system, i.e., no mainstream outlets expressing their point of view (and of course, the left has no partisan media system equivalent to Fox and talk radio – Air America only went on air in early 2004, in six US markets, and its future still remains uncertain.)

What I think Americans wanted – and still want – is a source of news that they can trust but which will also give them news that is less filtered than what they get at home. And many of these Americans look at the British press (as well as the BBC) and see how these media consistently challenge not only President Bush but also their own prime minister and government. This only enhances the credibility of these media in comparison with their more anodyne U.S. counterparts

I'm reminded of an interview published last year in the Columbia Journalism Review ("Brits vs. Yanks"), comparing British and American styles of journalism, Leonard Doyle, the foreign editor at The Independent, was harshly critical of the U.S. elite press’s performance over Iraq. Doyle notes the debilitating effect of so-called "objectivity" on the American mainstream press. He makes the point that "What we consistently find is that the loudest demands for objectivity are made by groups or lobbies who want to ensure they get equal time in any story".

Doyle, who looks like quite a mild-mannered Brit in his CJR photograph, nevertheless slams U.S. media coverage – pointing out how it failed to challenge a neoconservative elite that drove the US into an "illegal" war, how the media ignored Scott Ritter, the weapons inspector who "got it right," yet gave voice to "dubious experts with no inherent knowledge of WMD". He continues:

And blaming the media’s failures on the Bush administration just confirms what I have felt all along – that the mainstream American press is often spineless in the face of government bullying, terrified of getting on the wrong side of public opinion, and thus was cheerleading from the sidelines as the nation charged into war."

Doyle blames "the structure of U.S. print journalism, where big media organizations like the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Washington Post are lumbering beasts with no real competition breathing down their necks. The result is an overcautious press that has fantastic resources at its disposal, but frankly disappoints when it comes to exposing the administration to rigorous scrutiny".