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British heroes to rescue America

No Heroics, Pulling and 'Good News Week' are all on America's "to do" list.

64America is picking up more British formats, two of which are airing in Australia.

ABC Studios is planning Heroics, which premieres in its original UK format No Heroics tonight on ABC2. Like the original, the US version will revolve around four B-list superheroes but led by Pete aka Chillout, a Canadian-born superhero who can freeze small objects.

Meanwhile Pulling, which is also airing on ABC2, will also be produced by ABC Studios. Based on a British format, it revolves around three single thirtysomething women, two of them to be played by Lindsay Sloane and Mary Elizabeth Ellis, who live together after one (Sloane) breaks off her engagement the day before her wedding.

Finally there was also news this week that NBC is closing in on a version of Have I Got News for You -the prototype to Good News Week.

And that’s without mentioning the AbFab adaptation.

Source: Hollywood Reporter, TV Week

10 Responses

  1. Why do the US networks continue to insist on remaking British shows when time and time again they get pulled after just a few episodes.

    Almost without exception they get lost in translation (you can see by them renaming “No Heroics” to “Heroics” they’re missing the point already) – and considering UK talent is dominating US screens in other ways at the moment, plus the US seem to be able to cope with the big British movies, I don’t see why they just don’t stick to the original where possible.

    That’s what they’re doing with Merlin on NBC this summer – so it’ll be interesting to see if it pays off. And if it doesn’t, well at least they’ve not gone to the expense of remaking it.

  2. Craig, the new macguyver movie is like the new a-team movie……..every so often it comes out in the media that the movie is about to get started…

    U made a good point though – it’s like hollywood has no new ideas. movies like predator, robocop, total recall are all getting lined up for a remake. For new ideas, why cant they just go and make movies of the more successful video games – like halflife etc….

  3. David I know there are new shows each season I was just being a little sarcastic but it does seam like many countries (mainly the US) will take a good idea and screw it up, about the only exception to this in recent time would be The Office and maybe Life on Mars.

    Anyone here they are planning a MacGiver movie, not sure if it’s for the big screen or not but could that lead to a new series, aka StarGate?

  4. HIGNFY should have been picked up by a broadcaster here years ago. It may be primarily British in content, but there’s enough viewers here who would appreciate the humour and cleverness of Merton and Hislop – and IMO would certainly show up the local counterpart as an inferior clone. Late night timeslot on SBS would be ideal.

  5. These ideas sound interesting, its better than yet more cop/medical/legal dramas. GNW in the US will probably be as successful as the TGYH adaption, but Pulling has the Waitress from IASIP so that automatically gets points in my book. Heroics could be fun if they actually used their powers and were witty about it like Heroes used to be back in the day (although it’d be more comedic)

  6. I agree with grant – though I’m not familiar with the HIGNFY show and I’ma pretty big fan of GNW – I do think it is too long – a half hour would be ideal. Make it a half hour, and run another comedy show after it….

  7. You can’t really compare “Have I Got News For You” and “Good News Week”, I loved GNW when it was a half hour on the ABC, but it is now the Marlon Brando of quiz shows, a sad bloated tragedy that should have retired gracefully long ago. HIGNFY is a far superior product, and if we didn’t have GNW, I’d hope that someone would pick up the format here. I felt that Glenn Robin’s show last year had more similarities to HIGNFY.

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