(the following is an immature anorakish rant - those unwilling to waste 60 seconds of their life reading the bitter grumbling of a man who watchs waay to much TV and has a pet peeve about American TV's habit of wrecking their adaptations of British TV might as well skip to the next item...)
Oh gawd, not again. Another American television network is about to ruin another classic British comedy - NBC are apparently hoping that their stateside version of the sexy BBC comedy hit Coupling will take the execrable Friends' place when that wildly popular series finally goes away..
Terrific, just terrific.
You can just imagine the bland and brainless cast that they'll assemble and the mess they'll make out of the scripts. They simply won't be able to leave well enough alone - they'll tweak it to match certain demographics, they'll replace stylishly sexy slapstick with broad MTV generation sleaze. They'll get our hopes up and dash them to bits on the rocks of bad taste.
Don't believe me?
Think I'm being to hard on the Networks?. well just keep in mind these are the same oafs who botched a brilliantly funny brit-com when they mistranslated Men Behaving Badly for American audiences. If they couldn't pull off simple laddish daftness how on earth are they going to duplicate Coupling's combination of very adult wit and schoolboy silliness. They won't - that's how.
I'd love to be proved wrong but the thought of a third rate imitation causing us to have to rename the original to Coupling UK, or worse yet pulling the original series from broadcast in order to have a clear playing field, is maddening.
(okay it's safe now. The silly, and rather sad really, rant has ended)
Worth watching
The new, if not substantially improved The Forsyte Saga. Much has been made about "21st century production values" but this mini-series airing on PBS's Masterpiece Theater will never replace the original in the hearts of those of us who grew up with it. That aside this is a cracking good period soap thanks to the strong source material (courtesy of John Galsworthy's wonderfully constructed series of novels) a vibrant and talented cast and those much ballyhood s "21st century production values". Will this new take on an old favorite become as beloved as the classic original 1969 series. Time will tell but until then it's one of the brightest lights to appear on public televisions recently rather faded drama
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