Surely you don't need us to tell you that The IT Crowd is one of the geekest comedies ever produced? The hit Channel 4 show starred Chris O'Dowd, Richard Ayoade, Katherine Parkinson and Matt Berry and was created by Graham Linehan. This was his third big success, after Father Ted and Black Books.
So it was probably no great surprise that the American networks wanted a bit of the action. A pilot was filmed in January 2007, and a full series was ordered, advertised by NBC to be aired in 2007–08. In the US version Richard Ayoade reprised his role of Moss now joined by Joel McHale as Roy, Jessica St. Clair as Jen and Rocky Carroll as Denholm.
The pilot was never aired and the full series order was cancelled, although its believed that before the axe was swung almost half a season was filmed, and is now just lying somewhere on a dusty NBC shelf. The pilot episode did eventually leak online and in this clip you can see just how much
Graham Linehan was credited as executive producer, but he has since stated that he had no involvement in this remake. But just think, if this had gone to series Community may have been a very different show. Who else could've played Jeff Winger?
But NBC are clearly still keen to bring this show to US audiences. Deadline reported last week that Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence and Community alums Neil Goldman & Garrett Donovan are working on another pilot for a US series. There is no word on any cast of time frame as yet, but maybe they should just let this one go. Because 2007 didn't only see a remake of The IT Crowd fail in the US, but also in 'The Laughter Capital of the World' - Germany!
Germany is well known for its sit-coms (!), but they couldn't tempt Richard Ayoade to 'sprechen sie deutsch' for this version of The IT Crowd. The title was changed to Das iTeam – Die Jungs an der Maus (The iTeam – The Boys at the Mouse). And it was awful...
This adaptation lasted all of 2 episodes!
Take heed NBC, some British shows should be left untouched. They just lose something in translation, and I'm not just talking about viewers.
Next you'll be trying to remake Broadchu...... oh.
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