Dear David E. Kelly:

[yendi]

Since I'm way behind on Entertainment Weekly, I only just now discovered that you are planning to create an American remake of Life on Mars.

Please stop right now.

Life on Mars is as close to a perfect crime show as you can find on TV nowadays.

You, on the other hand, are as flawed a producer as one can find. If I'm feeling generous, I'd say that you haven't done anything worthwhile on the small screen since season 1 of Ally McBeal. I'm usually more inclined to harken back to Picket Fences, however.

Given the combined creative oomph shown in Girl's Club, The Brotherhood of Poland, N.H., Boston Public, and Snoops, I have no reason to expect anything good out of your attempt to remake LiM.

Comments

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I liked Boston Public. *pout*

I've never seen Life on Mars.

[yendi]

I know that BP (like The Practice) has lots of fans. I was just never one of them.

If you've got BBCAmerica, it's worth seeing if LoM will be reaired, and setting your Tivo to hunt for it.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Alas, BBC America is not part of basic cable around here.

[bassfingers.livejournal.com]

BP, unlike the others you mentioned, at least had enough substance to last a few seasons (most of the others you list lasted a few episodes at most.)

[yendi]

True. I just never was able to get into it.

[texmorgan.livejournal.com]

It might be the best show I've seen in at least the past five years if not more. Watch it and love it. Oh yeah, and watch out for the girl in the tv;she freaks me out every time.

[chris-walsh.livejournal.com]

I think Kelley needs to be a workaholic...but ideally on one show at a time. I think he overbooks himself. So I'm unimpressed with the Life on Mars idea, too, and I've yet to even see the original.

I am a fan of Picket Fences and The Practice (I'm surprised at how often I make reference to Bobby Donnell) and even lesser Ally McBeal (like the season with Anne Heche) still more or less "worked" for me, but yeah, what you said. Especially in re: the shows you cited in the last paragraph.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

...and Picket Fences was no prize. Having grown up in a real small town of 1,100 people, I found his small town of 50,000 people laughable. They had a sheriff with a staff of three or four; a general practioner MD who was also a surgeon; and best of all, one judge and one defense attorney for this entire town. It was hysterical.

[dadandgirl.livejournal.com]

Seriously? 50,000 people? How do they call that a small town? That's a pretty big town - twice the size of my hometown, and almost as large as Ann Arbor once the students have gone home.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Seriously.

How do they call that a small town? By living in a sprawling metropolis of many millions and having a failure of imagination? To someone who thinks of living in the LA area as "normal", a town of 50,000 people IS a small town....

[yendi]

Did they actually claim it was 50K? I live in a town of 32K, and it feels three times as big as that town. I always assumed it was about 5K people at most.

[sinanju.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they did.* That's what made it so funny to me; they clearly had NO idea what they were talking about when they tried to write about a "small town" of 50,000.


*Unless my memory is playing tricks on me.

[maltor.livejournal.com]

For the UK version, season 1 only had 8 episodes, and it's already been announced the show is ending after they finish with the 8 episodes planned for season 2. The creators feel that they've reached the limit of what can be done with the concept and still be true to it.

What's even worse is that for it be profitable for US broadcast network TV, they have to do 20 episodes per season minimum. Which means, that they'd produce 4 really good episodes, 4 or 5 that were OK, with the rest being just bloody pathetic. The only way to produce an Americanized version would be to do it as a limited run series like TNT has done with Saved and The Closer.

BTW, for the folks with digital cable, the first episode is currently running on BBCAmericas On-Demand channel.

[yendi]

See, that's the proper model. Short, limited seasons that tell whatever story needs to be told, and that's it.

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

Definitely!

I actually like the recent trend of some American series to actually do two or three smaller series of 8-13 episodes, instead of a single 24-26 episode series.

I've also noticed that they are starting to do at least a few shows that are specifically designed from the beginning to run only a set number of seasons (or, in some cases, only 13 episodes).

I think DVD is responsible for a lot of this (especially the success of shows like Firefly on DVD), because a 13 episodes set is almost the perfect size for a DVD release (both in number of discs and in pricing, compared to a "full" season set).

I think another plus from this is that it encourages networks (even the insta-cancellers, such as Fox) to at least let a series run for 13 episodes, rather than cancelling it after 2 or 3.

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

Here's my prediction for the US version:

(1) They'll strip it of pretty much everything that gives it its charm.
(2) They'll add in a lot of extra crap to make it more "exciting".
(3) They'll pad it out from 8 episodes to 26 to fill up an American TV season, which will include sticking in a lot of "filler" episodes.
(4) Instead of ending the show after the story is told (2-3 series), they will keep it as open-ended as possible, so that it can potentially keep going forever.
(5) They'll rename it to something that supposedly "sounds more like" what the show's about (as with the rename of The Philosopher's Stone to The Sorcerer's Stone), since they'll be convinced that the title Life on Mars will be confusing.

The net result will be a show that bears little or no resemblance to the original.

There have been exceptions, of course, but in general this seems to be how the UK series to US series thing goes, and the fact that David E. Kelly will be doing it certainly doesn't make me any more optimistic.

[yendi]

Yup. For every The Office, there are ten things like Payne

[cscottd.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Now I have to go scrub out my brain. ;)

[yendi]

Heh. Sorry about that.

[texmorgan.livejournal.com]

This is one of those things that really just tells me the same thing I've known for years: the entertainment industry has run out of original ideas and is now going cut-throat.