British television networks, which have always seemed to have more self-awareness and honesty about how human beings are actually built than their American counterparts, who insist that all leads on all series must be glamorous and unhealthily skinny, has produced thousands of hours of television in which the old, the unattractive, and the overweight can be stars - and be popular, in the bargain.
One of the more popular comedy series in Britain in the last few years has been Gavin and Stacey, about a young married couple. In 2007, it became the most nominated show in the British Comedy Awards, and in 2008 was awarded with a BAFTA (British Academy Television Award).
In addition, the show is seen around the world.
And - at least in the episodes I have seen - both Stacey and Gavin are what we used to call pleasantly plump.
So naturally, American television must make its own version.
One must bear in mind here that for every successful translation of a program like The Office, there are disasters like Coupling, or the various attempts to make our own versions of Fawlty Towers.
Sure, Steptoe and Son became Sanford and Son, but out television highway is also littered with the remains of our attempts at Cracker and The Prisoner (ugh) - or the travesty of The Eleventh Hour, which pulled its punches so as not to offend any religious fundamentalists in the audience.
Side note: check out the original version of The Eleventh Hour, starring Patrick Stewart (X-Men, Star Trek: The Next Generation) if you want to see a show that would send American TV execs hiding under their chairs.
Fox (I?m still annoyed with you for cancelling Touch and Firefly) will now be remaking Gavin and Stacey for American audiences, but bearing in mind that most of us are super-models, the leads will be Jason Ritter (Joan of Arcadia) and Alexis Bledel (The Gilmore Girls) - gee, you had me hooked at young, attractive couple, Fox. That just sounds so damned original.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22462642
Oh, we have folks who are weight-challenged on American television - in supporting roles. The genial black man/woman who is our coworker, or the computer operator.
The bad guys. The boss who is a jerk.
Our TV landscape, of course, is populated largely with men and women who have had their skin tightened, cut, slit, pulled up and injected with who knows what until we have the unbelievable images of men and women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s with skin like teenagers, all traces of life?s experience carefully vacuumed away.
You know, the way all of our fellow Walmart customers look, if we really squint.
Then again, TV executives would have you believe that men and women in crime scene units dress up like fashion models to go to a crime scene. You could sneer and say, ?It?s only a TV show,? but I read an article last year about young people applying for work in police labs wearing what they had seen actors wear on TV.
So our American Gavin and Stacey will be young, scrubbed and attractive, just like most of our real life neighbors don?t look like. The original Gavin and Stacey made me think of real people; I doubt the Fox version will.
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Today?s Soundtrack
Today?s blog was written to the tune of Christopher Denny?s CD, Age Old Hunger.
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Quote of the Day
If you refuse to talk to me because of what I'm wearing, it was worth it. - Neil Gaiman
rsdrake@cox.net
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