why?

[dbskyler]

I just came across an American version of Top Gear. Why does this exist? Just like everyone else, we have the British version of Top Gear. Isn't that all we need? Why do American television executives seem to believe that Americans won't watch TV where people speak with British accents?

Comments

[ghost2.livejournal.com]

The BBC shopped this adaption of Top Gear to the U.S. and I think co-produces it. I'm pretty sure several other countries also air "local" versions. Also, American versions of shows generally do perform better in the U.S. than the original foreign versions of those shows, plus there are the issues of greater creative control and financial benefits.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

You're right, there are other "local" versions, aren't there? At least, I seem to remember a match-up once between the British Top Gear and the German one, or something like that. It's very definitely licensed by the BBC at least (and probably co-produced), as everything is the same right down to the logo. Except for the hosts, of course. Which I would argue is the best thing about the British version. I certainly found the American hosts boring. But I suppose there's some logic to the idea that an American version can focus on U.S.-based challenges (those could be interesting) and American-made cars (I couldn't care less, but some people might care). But personally, I plan on sticking with the British version.

[shadowturquoise.livejournal.com]

Really? I can't imagine I woukd like or watch an American version - why mess with perfection! I love the British Top Gear. The closest thing to American I want to see on Top Gear is for them to have Click & Clack as guests someday.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Click & Clack would be awesome! Or what about a visit from the Mythbusters? Two great things that would go great together!

I love British Top Gear too. I agree that it's perfection as it is, so why try to re-invent it? It's not like we can't fully enjoy it as it is without dubbing or subtitles.

[lolmac]

I would say that this is the thought process (if you can call it thinking):

"Hey, look. That show made money in the UK!"

"Can it make money here? Will they sell us the idea?"

"Sure, they'll sell us the idea. It's easier than thinking up ideas of our own, and we already know it works."

"Will it work? Or is the idea too clever for the US?"

"Good point. We'd better dumb it down."

"Yes! And then we'll make money!"

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is probably exactly how it went.

Sigh.

[lolmac]

Red Dwarf and the Doctor Who movie being examples . . . I know there are fans who like Eight, but structurally, the movie was a massive special effects budget stretched over the thinnest shell of a plot. I remember thinking that it had barely enough story for one of the old 24-minute episodes.

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I'm in the "Eight was a great Doctor; shame about the TV Movie" camp. I don't know if it was all Fox's fault, though.

[thisbluespirit]

Well, as long as they still show the UK Top Gear, you get two versions. Doesn't seem too bad to me! ;-) Besides, with something like that, I could see them wanting to focus on US-specific tech/cars, which has a certain logic.

Drama is worse, because while it sometimes works, there is an indefinable thing about the chemistry of writers/actors/directors etc that is what makes it come off or fail, and that can't be reproduced. Sometimes you get a cool alternative, though.

And some people are funny about accents - I've actually seen comments from Americans in various places complaining about not wanting to watch British stuff because they can't understand our accent. (To which I want to say, which accent? Because there's a world of difference between many of them!) And here in the UK while I don't think I've ever heard anyone complaining about incomprehnsible US accents as a rule, I did have someone tell me they couldn't watch Torchwood because it was too Welsh. (There is a weird and rabid anti-Welsh thing that some English people still have. I don't get it because I come from Somerset where we could see Wales across the channel, and we all had Welsh relatives.) And the Glasgow accent is largely assumed to be unintelligable, as is a broad, southern Irish accent... And some people don't understand regional accents and really wish everyone would talk in RP what like they used to. :-)

*sigh*

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Yes, as long as BBCA keep showing UK Top Gear, other channels can show as many different versions of it as they want! And who knows, maybe some of it will be good.

I have to admit that the American version of Being Human does it right. They took the set-up and some of the storylines, and created a different show. Because they're allowing (I would even say encouraging) the characters to be different from the UK version, there's no "they didn't reproduce that correctly" problem. My only issue with it is that they use just enough of the UK storylines to make me constantly second-guess what's going to happen next. Sometimes a plotline will resolve in the same way (and they're a season or two behind), but sometimes the outcome is completely different. And sometimes I feel like the producers are doing it on purpose, playing with the expectations of those of us who've seen the UK version. The fiends!

I do occasionally have trouble with the accents on British television, so I can have some sympathy there, but I think Top Gear is easy for most Americans to understand. It's also not what I would call a dialogue-dependent show. If you miss a joke about Richard Hammond, does it really matter? But oh well. I do miss the days when everyone on Doctor Who spoke with an RP accent, though, because so much of that dialogue is important, and I don't always catch it all. But regional accents are interesting, too. And the best way to learn to understand them is to hear them. It doesn't hurt to be reminded that there are other places in the world, either.

[thisbluespirit]

See? Sometimes it just means you get extra TV! ;-)

And I can understand that RP was nicer overseas, but it's just... most people never spoke like that outside of the BBC, and it was rather a classist and geographical prejudice thing in many ways, so I'm glad it's mostly gone. Although many people do have an amusing tendency to replace it with a sort of generic North London accent, heh. (Sort of 'let's not sound posh, but we can't attempt a comedy regional accent' thing, I suppose!)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that they're being more realistic and inclusive with the accents, but I'm afraid that those subtleties go right by me, whizz! In fact, I am one of those annoying Americans who is capable of mistaking an Australian accent for a British one. Seriously, I never try to guess where people are from when I meet them while traveling, because I've been so completely off-base so often. As for figuring out North London vs. oh, I don't know, Manchester or something, I have no chance. ; )

[thisbluespirit]

:lol: I am quite bad at identifying accents right off, although not too bad after a while, but, ha, I can't imagine not being able to recognise an Australian accent, unless it was a really mild one! Trust me, I don't sound anything like Tegan! Although, apparently Janet has the wrong accent to be from Brisbane, which I wouldn't have a clue about. (But I can tell the difference between some American accents, and even notice when someone is Canadian if I'm really paying attention, although not always. One day I might even get beyond vaguely north/mid-west/southern/Texas in my identification of them. ;-P)

I suppose I'm interested after moving from SW to NE - it was like learning another language at times, and people think my slightly neutral/ faint SW accent is posh. (A truly heinous crime here...) Mostly, I could understand everything. Except for the difference betwee 'e' and 'a'. They sound exactly alike when people spell out their names to you (ee). I have been here so long now, though, I can usually get which one on the first try. Besides, I do history, and accents and dialects all betray fascinating stuff about cultural history. (For instance, a lot of SW accent and dialect preserves Anglo-Saxon language and pronunciation and so on & of course the way English and American both moved on and preserved different words from the 17th C where they parted company.) :-)

PS. North London (sort of "Norf Lunnon" ish. Manchester = Gene Hunt, Ninth Doctor, Victoria Wood, and I was going to say Coronation St, but somehow I doubt you get that in the US... :lol: Hmm. You probably didn't get Victoria Wood, either - unless maybe Dinnerladies? If anyone says 'chuck' and 'ta-ra', they're probably from Manchester. Or they watch too much Coronation Street. :-D)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

ha, I can't imagine not being able to recognise an Australian accent, unless it was a really mild one!

It's not something I'm proud of, but it is unfortunately true. If you get a bunch of people with different accents talking together, I can tell that they're different, and usually even tell which is which ("aha, that's Scottish, and that's English, and that's Australian"), but when it's just one person speaking alone I can really embarrass myself. I mean, I know it's not, say, a French accent, but the list of possible countries of origin that goes through my head is sadly pretty large.

Maybe I don't get to hear enough different accents, or maybe I'm just very bad at it? I don't know. Canadians sound just like Americans to me, except for very occasionally when there's a broad "ou" sound, or they say "eh" (that one's a dead giveaway). But I once knew someone for a year and a half before I found out she was Canadian. Of course, she was living in the U.S., so that may have had something to do with how she spoke?

I haven't seen Victoria Wood or Coronation Street, but they might get shown here somewhere. It used to be that British shows were always on PBS, but now you have to hunt around for them. Doctor Who and Top Gear are on BBC America. Merlin is on SyFy. And I just stumbled across Moffat's Sherlock on PBS. I think Downton Abbey might also be on PBS, but I'm not sure. That's one I'd like to try out, assuming I can ever find it.

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, actually, having said all that, I think I know what you mean - or, at least, I do something similar. If it's one person and I can tell they have an Accent, then which one will sometimes take quite a while to dawn, depending. :-)

I've just realised that most of the Canadians I know were in the UK, so maybe the tendency to sound more mid-Atlantic was due to that, but it seems to me there is a difference, although sometimes not much. (I mean, if someone comes from a v northern part of the US and a Southern part of Canada, there vcan't be much, by and large, can there?) I had a history teacher for A-Level who was Canadian and it used to drive him mad that people thought he was American. (He shouldn't have worn the cowboy boots, really. :lol: Oh, and that wasn't a bad joke. He actually wore cowboy boots.)

Downton Abbey is definitely shown in the US - I think on PBS as part of Masterpiece, if that makes any sense to you? They've chopped the episodes down a bit, though, and I think they're showing S2 at the moment. (I hang out on downton_abbey sometimes, so I know this stuff.)

Coronation Street is one of our two endless soaps, so you definitely won't get that, but it's been going for longer than Doctor Who and is a national institution. There are even some people still in it who've been there for over 40 years. Victoria Wood was mostly on years ago, and I can't imagine it went over the Atlantic, but I have a feeling her sitcom Dinnerladies might have done, but that would be a few years ago. (That was set in a factory canteen in Manchester, and was really quite funny and sweet - I recommend it if you did ever fall over it. I don't think there's very much of it! It had the actress who plays Gita in it, too.)

And I don't know if this will make ANY sense, but it's brilliant - one of the sketches in her original 1980s show was a soap-pastiche called Acorn Antiques, in which all the camera angles are wrong, the acting bad, the accents dodgy, everyone misses their cues, overdramatic dialogue, no budget, improbable storylines and the same extras in every shot. It's here.

(Sorry... I just really like some of Victoria Wood's stuff, but she may be mystifying overseas, especially a couple of decades later!!)

[dbskyler.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think we agree that accents are hard, but also interesting! Believe it or not, last summer when I was in London (for "Much Ado"), someone stopped me on the street to ask for directions, and then complimented me on my accent. I was floored, because no one normally thinks that an American accent is very interesting to listen to. Except apparently for this woman, who was English, but didn't know London very well. Not that I know London well either, but I had a map. So maybe she was just being nice. *g*

Downton Abbey is definitely shown in the US - I think on PBS as part of Masterpiece, if that makes any sense to you?

Yep, that makes sense! It doesn't tell me when it's going to be on, but it does help to track that information down. (Each local PBS station does slightly different things, so having to look it up for my own station was kind of inevitable, really.)

[thisbluespirit]

:-)

I can't imagine someone would randomly compliment you on your accent unless they genuinely liked it! So, there, you must have a nice one. ;-) And, :lol:, it is the Rule in London than anyone you ask for directions is also a visitor.