The Americanization of<i>The Office</i>: A Comparison of the Offbeat NBC Sitcom and Its British Predecessor

Griffin, Jeffrey L.

doi:10.3200/jpft.35.4.154-163

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…There is a good amount of scholarship on these two (e.g. Barlaam 2011, Griffin 2008) and on the British version of Shameless (hereafter referred to as Shameless UK). However, with the notable exception of (brief) attention by Elke Weissmann (2012) and Beth Johnson (2013), the US version of Shameless (hereafter Shameless USA) has received rather little scholarly analysis.…”

Section: A Transitional Moment For Transatlantic Fiction Format Adaptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shameless, the push-pull of transatlantic fiction format adaptation, and star casting

Knox

2018

New Review of Film and Television Studies

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With a long history of transatlantic exchanges, recent years have seen a notable number of UK-to-USA format adaptations. Factually-based programming (including the Idol franchise) has generally been the most numerous, the most commercially successful and received the most sustained critical attention (e.g. Oren and Shahaf 2012). However, adaptations of fiction formats have met with increasing scholarly attention, and this article will build on this work, interested in the ways in which, as Jean K. Chalaby has noted, the adaptation process for scripted formats: cannot be as perfunctory as for other genres. Scripted genres are the most culturally sensitive, and a comedy or drama cannot be reproduced as mechanistically as a game show or talent competition. […] Any scripted adaptation must go beyond copycat television and reactualize the script for a new audience. (2016, 6) This article will explore the complex push-pull of factors involved in adapting fiction formats across the Atlantic. Here, my invocation of the term 'push-pull' differs from Annette Hill's recent usage in her discussion of fiction format adaptation, where 'the idea of push-pull dynamics is understood as complicated power relations in the transactions between television industries and audiences.' (Hill 2016, 755) Instead, I draw on Albert Moran's (2009, 88) identification of a push-pull tendency in the television format trade between the poles of homogeneity/convergence and heterogeneity/difference. While Moran's analysis is specifically focused on the issue of language, his attention to the conflicting impetuses that mark formats can be usefully linked to Heidi Keinonen's (2016) emphasis on format adaptations as complex sites of culturaland, I would add, industrialnegotiation. Keinonen furthermore locates a schism within existing format scholarship, distinguishing between broader analyses of global format trade (which draw on a political economy approach and frequently do not pay sufficient attention to cultural issues) and analyses of individual case studies, which 'usually limit themselves to the analysis of the final product, the television text, thus ignoring other levels of format industry, like production and reception.' (2016, 4) In my endeavour to undertake an analysis of a specific transatlantic format adaptation that engages with both cultural and production/industry contexts, I have found the term 'push-pull' a useful idea through which to understand and articulate the tensions and negotiations that emerge in the transatlantic trajectory under investigation. The complexity of the push-pull dynamics of interest to this article is only accentuated through the discursive scrutiny bestowed upon such transatlantic adaptations by audiences and press/critics. Fiction format adaptations are often and increasingly consumed with the source programmes as a point of reference and comparison. In the case of transatlantic format adaptations, the shared language, history and cultural commonalities between the USA and the UK only facilitate such compar...

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Section: A Transitional Moment For Transatlantic Fiction Format Adaptmentioning

confidence: 99%

Shameless, the push-pull of transatlantic fiction format adaptation, and star casting

Knox

2018

New Review of Film and Television Studies

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“…Developed by Jeff Rake (Boston Legal, ABC, 2004-2008, who is also executive producer with Greg Berlanti (The Flash, CW, 2014-) http://www.revistalatinacs.org/073paper/1284/43en.html Página 839…”

Section: The Mysteries Of Laura (Nbc 2014-): Particularities Of the mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding remakes of a television series, one of the most prolific and leading European markets is the British market (Griffin, 2008), together with Nordic countries, which production values focused in the nordic noir (Waade and Jensen, 2013;Waade and Jensen, 2016) have attracted American adaptations of series like The Killing (AMC, 2011(AMC, -2013Netflix, 2014) and The Bridge (FX, 2013(FX, -2014 (Askanius, 2017). The Nordic productions have achieved their own production style around mournful characters and landscapes through criminal stories that had a great success in global markets (Hill, 2017;Hill, 2016a;Hill 2016b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Settlement of the Spanish fiction series abroad (2005-2017). The case of the North American adaptation of Los misterios de Laura from the perspective of its creators

Diego¹,

Pérez²

2018

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Introduction. The main objective of this paper is to reflect about the success of Spanish TV adaptation abroad. This paper collects the Spanish television series that have been adapted in other markets in the time of consolidation of this phenomenon (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017), and there is an analysis of the production values of the RTVE Spanish series Los Misterios de Laura (La 1, 2009(La 1, -2014, adapted in USA by NBC under the title The Mysteries of Laura (NBC, 2014(NBC, -2016. Methodology. For the empirical part of this research, we have analyzed the production of Spanish TV adaptations, and an in depth interview to the Spanish writers of Los Misterios de Laura' creators was conducted, as well as the analysis of chapters and the bible of the program. Conclusions and discussion. This paper highlights the development phase of the idea, where the concept, style and the design of characters are key issues in the adaptation process of a Spanish television series abroad.

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“…For example, the much commented on success of the American remake of the comedy series The Office has been attributed to the fact that it managed to depart from the original in order to find its own voice and direction (Griffin 2008). It may well be that the American Gracepoint failed to find an audience, not because it was so different from the original but because it tried too hard to be the same.…”

Section: The Bottom Linementioning

confidence: 99%

Trafficking in TV crime: remakingBroadchurch

Turnbull

2015

Continuum

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The Americanization ofThe Office: A Comparison of the Offbeat NBC Sitcom and Its British Predecessor

Cited by 15 publications

References 2 publications

Shameless, the push-pull of transatlantic fiction format adaptation, and star casting

Shameless, the push-pull of transatlantic fiction format adaptation, and star casting

Settlement of the Spanish fiction series abroad (2005-2017). The case of the North American adaptation of Los misterios de Laura from the perspective of its creators

Trafficking in TV crime: remakingBroadchurch

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