Last night I watched the pilot episode for Shameless a "new" show on Showtime. I say new in quotations because its based on the British version of the show with the same name. When I lived in Europe, I watched Shameless starting with season 4, and currently the show is on season 8. It got me thinking how many other shows did the US take from the UK, and some of them were surprising to me because I thought they were shows founded in the US. The biggest one on the list is American Idol which was taken from a British show called Pop Idol, if your not surprised by that one, perhaps this one will get you. Dancing with the Stars, what could be more american than that eh? Well it was actually a show in England called Strictly come dancing a few years before it jumped the pond. Junkyard Wars, Trading Spaces, and even American Gladiators were all ideas taken on shows based in the UK.
When I was living there I noticed that most of the American sitcoms weren't changed they were just shown in the UK a season or half season behind the ones here. They didn't change the actors or the scripts to fit the country. I think this might be due to the fact that American comedy translates well in most societies, where as the foreign sense of humor for the most part is so different. A lot of the comedies that come out of England the humor is often dry and a bit dark, it takes a bit more intelligence to get some of it. I would say for the most part Americans don't want to think when they watch television, the humor should be apparent and almost slapstick in order to receive high ratings. The best example of a brainy American show I can think of that was canceled is Arrested Development. It appeared that people should laugh at one thing but the show always had a clever twist and a way of making the not so obvious political joke.  ¶ 8:09 PM