Last night’s premiere of the American version of Kath and Kim could quite possibly be the most mystifying programming decision in Australian television history.
Sure, there have been mistakes in the past. Col’n Carpenter, the show that saw the bumbling buffoonery of Kim Gyngell out on his own, didn’t have the same punch as his Comedy Company ensemble performances.
Hampton Court, the beige Hey Dad! spin off that had Julie McGregor hoisting the gags off the back of her Betty character, really shouldn’t have been made.
But at least they had some kind of unique Australian dodginess about them – they were crap, but at least they had endearing characters.
However, the choice of the Seven Network to broadcast the US version of Kath and Kim is programming suicide.
For starters, the original Kath and Kim, created by Jane Turner and Gina Riley, was brilliant for two main reasons – it was acute in its critique of suburban malaise, and friendly enough not to be condescending to those it was ridiculing.
Threaded through the show was the daring and delicious veracity of the humour – it was ugly, brash and glaringly real.
We have all met characters in this show, and we have all had our own private snigger at them – from the hapless hipster Kel, to the stuck up socialites Prue and Trude – everyone got a look in.
The US version however, starring Molly Shannon and Selma Blair, falls flat on its face – lacking the spirit and spunk of the Australian version, and delivering a stylized, plain and paint-by-numbers attempt at re-imagining a unique brand of brilliant Aussie comedy.
While Turner and Riley delivered a sharp, tightly honed performance, Shannon and Blair are unclear who or what they are satirizing.
The result ends up being a strange concoction combining loose bits of Clueless, Desperate Housewives, Bridgette Jones and Nip/Tuck, with the original Australian format acting as a skeleton to (only just) hold it together.
Shannon, a noted comedy actress in her own right, suffers from a bland script and hideous direction – the main problem being that her Kath is too normal to be funny.
The same can be said in regard to the vacant, but inappropriately attractive Blair whose Kim comes out of the wash as a normal, bratty, but unfunny, 26-year-old.
The googly doofus of Peter Rosethorn’s Brett, has been replaced by Mikey Day’s Craig, a moderate dork who wouldn’t be out of place as a supporting extra on ER.
Glenn Robins’s Kel is portrayed by John Michael Hill, a well loved mockumentary actor, but is lost in a wilderness of confused setups and hokey gags.
The mark missed by the creators of this show is that the Aussie characters embraced their flab rolls, their hideous fashion and their horrid hair with gusto – the US version has preened it away in the fear of being too ugly it may turn viewers off. In the process, they washed out the comedy.
While there have been American adaptation success stories - the US version of Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant’s The Office has been widely praised - this one is a write-off.
The massive amount of exposure and hype the series has received in the states will not compensate for the fundamental lack of comedy contained within.
Someone really should be testing the water over at Seven - the choice to run a filtered down American version of a hugely popular, and culturally relevant program, and not expect it to crash and burn with ferocious intensity can only be described as madness.
But with 1.2 million Australians tuning in last night, perhaps that was the grand plan from the beginning.
Lets see how many go for a second helping next week.