Supernanny or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love British Influence in American Television
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how most of our popular shows are just remakes of British television shows. Think about it…
Probably most famously is the Office where the wildly successful “The Office” (UK) was changed into the wildly successful “The Office” (US).
A lot of my favorite shows have been stolen from British TV, such as “Whose Line is it Anyway?”, “The Weakest Link,” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”
Even some classic shows took British ideas and adapted them for American television like “Sanford and Son,” “Cosby”, and “Three’s Company.”
As time goes on more and more of our most popular shows are becoming less and less original – “American Gladiators” (minus the “American” part in England), “Supernanny”, “American Idol” (called “Pop Idol” in England), “Wife Swap” and “Trading Spouses,” “Trading Spaces,” and “Dancing with the Stars.”
But it’s nice to know that most of the rest of our great shows were stolen by them: “The Price is Right,” “That 70s Show,” “Saturday Night Live,” the original “American Gladiators,” “Family Feud,” and “Wheel of Fortune.”
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America is almost like England…We both speak English…We both are military powers, we both like good tv(most of the time)…And that is all I can think of right now. So maybe were not all that alike. They play soccer, we don’t… we play hockey, they don’t…we drink coffee, they drink tea, and the list just goes on and on. But now on to Television…Britain steals great shows from us, and we steal great shows from them. Good blog here, I enjoyed reading it.