"Keyser Söze could kick Francis Urquhart's ass!" "You take that back!"

[captainsblog]

Once again, we are suffering the Americanization of something other than Emily.Who's to figure? Our kid LIKES Elementary, which I cannot accept as being anything other than a US-knetwork knockoff of the Moff/Cumberbatch/Freeman BBC re-imagining of the Sherlock franchise.

Can't bring myself to try. I DID try, the last time US telly took on an esteemed Brit franchise. Prime Suspect tried to turn Jane into Yo! Janey!, and despite Maria Bello's best efforts to honor and adapt the role, the stories turned it into 46-minute hashed police procedural with no arc, no heart, no Tennyson to the right or left of Jane Not Tennison.  The viewers agreed with this assessment, and 11 episodes in, Jane Timoney got stuffed in the boot.

Now Netflix, of all things, wants to rip another epic series from the bosom of my soul- and with Kevin Spacey at the heart of it:



House of Cards is an upcoming political drama television series developed for American television by Kevin Spacey, David Fincher and Beau Willimon. The series stars Spacey as Frank Underwood, a ruthless politician with his eye on the top job in Washington. It is an adaptation of the previous BBC miniseries of the same name. The first season will premiere on February 1, 2013.

If they're streaming it, yeah, I'll probably watch- but with eyes fully set on watching the car accident unfold.  I'm sorry, but I don't see how you can move the intellect, the history, the Your Majesty of FU's world to the cesspool that is the United States Congress.  The Urquhart trilogy needed Britain- its monarch, its back benches, especially its very different press- for the series to work as well as it did.  Plus, I see the same issue that Prime Suspect suffered from- trying to convert the short, tight arc of a handful of British episodes into a 12-or-13 week series of US broadcasts. Unless you've got someone as naturally powerful as a Tony Soprano or a Dexter Morgan to carry the load, it is a damn hard thing to ask of a cast.

Do you disagree- think this is a worthy effort that will introduce more of the US to the wonders of British programming?

You might very well think that. And I've already commented.

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

I will admit to liking Elementary more as the characters are developing, but it is NO Sherlock. If the casting in Elementary had been less fortuitous, it would be a snooze fest.

Otherwise, I am 100% with you. Heck, even Law & Order UK turned into a much more thoughtful beast than the US version.

Most of my Netflix watching is British series. Mostly mystery series. Midsomer Murders just goes on and on.

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

I watched a few minutes of Elementary (my wife likes it), and, if you simply change the names of the two main characters, it's fine. It simply has no more congruence with, you know, Sherlock Holmes, than 2 or 3%.

*shakes head sadly*

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't even mind the casting as they did it- I mean, Miller rocks, and Lucy kicks! If they'd set it in any other era (a film noir black-and-white 50's LA H&W?), or even any other city, I'd have given it a shot. But present-day New York just seemed overdone and I was highly Prime Suspect of it.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I am utterly at a loss to explain why anyone feels it necessary to adapt British shows and change them for an American audience. As an anglophile, the Britishness of something is appealing to me--a selling point not a liability. What's the logic? Change the slang, remove all the understatement, replace all the actors with sandblasted mannequins and let's go!

[captainsblog.livejournal.com]

"But it worked with All in the Family."

Yeah, 40 years ago, when there were four channels on.