As you may recall from yesterday's news, ITV is going to remake US sitcom Dharma & Greg. In case you never watched it, it was about a straight-laced lawyer with rich parents, and a happy-go-lucky yoga instructor with hippies for parents who meet, marry on their first date then try to forge a life together.
Now clearly it would be hard to do a direct translation of the show: there aren't that many hippies left in Britain for starters. So they're going to have to do some script work.
So today's memic questions are: how do you think they're going to convert it to a British sit-com? Why have they chosen Dharma & Greg to convert? And since ultimately Dharma (as played by the highly kooky Jenna Elfman) was the star of the US sitcom, not Greg, who do you think will be – or should be – the British Dharma?
Over to you my friends, although I feel all the questions can be answered quickly and easily if you remember ITV are doing this – and the Beeb still haven't confirmed for a third series of Gavin & Stacey…
PS Please remember that all my conspiracy theories are always wrong.
Here's the start of the first episode, just as an aide memoire:
June 21, 2008 | Reply
It's a personality led premise -- I think it might even have been written with Jenna in mind and it's just another example of the wrongness of ITV that they're remaking a show that they themselves messed about with in scheduling when it appeared over here.
June 21, 2008 | Reply
Maybe they have a personality in mind...
June 22, 2008 | Reply
Oh heck: I just used to lurve Dharma and Greg! In the brief spell when we had cable TV we became quickly addicted to the Paramount comedy schedule of D&G. Even when I found out about Jenna's scientology schtick I still enjoyed watching it.
I also remembered once I had started watching it that I had briefly seen it in the ITV schedules: ah remember the days when ITV would buy bundled programmes and have some real gems in there and would shunt them around the post 10pm news - any time between 10.30pm and 12.30am with no warning of when there would be an episode? I mean that never still happens does it...? *sigh*
So my view is WTF are ITV doing remaking something they screwed over in its original and better form to start with? Fools. I say 're-show the original!'
June 22, 2008 | Reply
PS we get it: Joanna for Dharma would be as good as we could hope for...
June 22, 2008 | Reply
Well that's true, but what I was really angling for was to see if anyone had any better suggestions or ideas as to who ITV might have in mind for such a relatively high profile, personality-led project or whether my rubbish conspiracy theory might have legs. Or if ITV was just going to mess it up by casting non-entities with no personalities.
The thing is, ITV are claiming to be past the big names, golden handcuffs, Robson Green/Ross Kemp phase of existence and trying to do things properly again. I'm curious as to whether anyone thinks they have.
September 15, 2008 | Reply
J'adore cette série, dommage qu'en France il y a que la première saison qui soit disponible en DVD