Americanized Remakes

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by Atreyu

I can think of a few American remakes that have been horrible. Two are TV shows.
The biggest and one of the best sitcoms ever was Fawlty Towers. There have been at least two tries to do it here in America. One bad attempt was with Bea Arthur and I think it was called Amanda's Place. And the last reincarnation was with John Laroquette titled Payne and his full name was Royale Payne-haha!

No, the last (and, for obvious reasons, LAST) reincarnation was Whoopi Goldberg. Don't feel bad if you never saw it.

And testament to the fact that nobody can ever do another version nowadays, is that the NYC equivalent of Manuel was now a poor Arab janitor--But even given the occasional post-9/11 joke, picking on foreigners, especially Iranians, would be bad for the network!...And so "Nasim" was now reasonably intelligent and sympathetic and got most of the good lines off of Whoopi.
Which sort of puts the final nail in the coffin about why we will NEVER have an American Fawlty Towers, although Bea Arthur came the closest.

Still, I've always been curious to see that "Beane's of Boston" Americanization of "Are You Being Served?".
(Although guess I'm the only one who knows that "Cheers" was originally envisioned as a Boston Fawlty Towers, with Sam as Basil and Diane as Sybil...)