What is your favorite game show if you have one?
Mine is probably wheel of fortune or the Masked singer
shareTaskmaster (2015), and it isn't even close. Luckily all eighteen seasons/series, as well as several spin-offs are on YT: https://www.youtube.com/@Taskmaster
shareWOW...I NEVER HEARD OF THAT....COOL.
shareIt’s quite entertaining. We actually have three versions broadcast here, from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The UK format is probably the best but all are watchable and can be funny depending on which comedians they have competing.
shareYep, also current on the NZ and AU versions. From what I have seen and heard, the subtitled non-English versions are mostly great, too, especially the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish versions. There are also Spanish, Portuguese and Finnish versions I have not yet checked out.
The US version that only lasted a single season/series was barely watchable, imo. I say this as a non-self-hating American, alas. It felt like they just didn't understand what makes the show great.
It felt like they just didn't understand what makes the show great
They do this so often. They buy a property up, and then tinker with it to suit what they imagine to be US audience preferences and so often just remove whatever it was that attracted them to the thing in the first place.
Sometimes they're right -- American mainstream audiences do have a different sensibility to a British mainstream audience, after all -- but so often you just think let it breathe, let people adjust to it, stop treating them like they're idiots.
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Ever see the US pilot for Peep Show? It's an abomination. That said, I prefer the US version of The Office, while still acknowledging the genius of the Gervais original. Then again, I think Ricky's single greatest accomplishment is introducing the world to Karl Pilkington. :D
sharePeep Show is exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of. Or The Inbetweeners. Or Coupling. Or any of those British shows that are just too 'edgy' for American network television. I think they once bought Absolutely Fabulous and then were instantly, like, well... we can't have them smoking and getting drunk. We can't have Edina being an irresponsible mother. They're not relatable characters. But that's the show. That's the whole point of the show.
Obviously, there's a cult following in the US -- probably quite a big cult following -- for that kind of humour. But they're going to be fine watching the originals. They don't need a remake.
And it's just never going to be mainstream... unless you get rid of everything that makes it what it is. So what's the point?
The US Office is one of the exceptions, isn't it? It quite quickly moves away from aping the British version and becomes its own thing. And evidently it does it quite successfully, because even British audiences quite like that show. (Never seen more than a handful of episodes myself.)
Ugh, I had forgotten about The Inbetweeners! It's not an easy thing to adapt a fictional product of a time, place and culture to newer and different one, especially comedy. Understatement of the year...
At least Gen Xers like myself had English shows on US Public Television stations to watch while growing up. My first disembodied childhood memory of a moment of TV is a brief Monty Python scene.
Well, that's the thing isn't it? Python was huge in the USA. Couldn't be more quintessentially British. And most of these shows do have a following there.
Is the media moulded to the national sensibility or is the national sensibility moulded by the media we're exposed to? Probably a little from column A and a little from column B, I suppose.
I mean, yeah, there are clear cultural differences and different expectations. So I do understand why American producers try to change things to suit the audience -- but I think the success of things like Python suggests they often underestimate what the the American audience can 'get'.
Yep. Even as what I'd consider to be an "intermediate+" appreciator of media and culture from the British Isles, I full well acknowledge there are always going to be references and such that will go over my head, and I'm totally okay with that.
Pretty sure it was Spaced that caused me to purchase Twiglets and Jaffa Cakes to see what they were talking about.
Sweet! Only discovered it maybe two years ago, and am now at the point of rewatching old seasons while waiting for new episodes to drop. I might have a problem.
Couple things you should know is each season/series has a different/new group of five comedian contestants, so if you don't like one group, try another season, but what generally ends up happening is a group will take an episode or two to grow on you, and by the end of that season you'll be bummed they're done and skeptical about the next group. Rinse and repeat.
Oh, and Alex Horne the "assistant" is actually the creator/head writer of the show, but the 6'8"/203 cm host/"Taskaster" Greg Davies bullies/makes fun of him constantly. :D
And lastly, the individual and sometimes group "tasks" are all filmed months before the studio portion, so all the contestants in the studio are seeing their task attempts for the first time in months. This dynamic combined with the clever editing is like the flower in the cap of this unique show.