Copy Fat Cats

Dear American Producer,

Imagine my disgust when I learned Australian cult classic Wilfred had been remade without my express permission. Before the fur of disgust took seed there was a wave of confusion, not dissimilar to the confusion poor Wilfred must have experienced when his master transformed inexplicably into an American hobbit (yes, LOTR fans, I appreciate this is impossible). Dogs can be really traumatised by change, as can audiences.

Later that day, the shock of Bizarro Wilfred resurrected a memory of the trailer for Death at a Funeral, the original of which is more quintessentially British than a milky tea, bad teeth, fish and chips in yesterday’s newspaper, miserable weather and Big Ben cocktail. Again, the recycling of a key player, being Peter Dinklage as dwarf Peter, was confusing. One can only surmise he played the role (renamed Frank) under duress involving electrodes and hot irons. Will the world’s little people ever be free from persecution?

Cue tsunami of formerly repressed memories, saturating the synaptic landscape of my brain, forcing me to relive the horror of learning of so many misguided remakes. Lost in Austen, set in fictional Georgian England, relocated to where, Austin Texas? More like lost in translation. Life on Mars, which you actually set ON MARS. As in the planet. Did you not even watch the original? David Bowie wept. Even the brilliant Miss Marple could not solve the mystery of how the universe allowed her to be dragged across the pond and played by charmless Jennifer Garner. Perhaps worst of all though was Kath and Kim, a show so culturally specific as to be so necessarily completely inimitable and only a dozen Australians really got it. That was one pilot even Cubana Airlines would want nothing to do with.

Other honourable mentions are the shameless casting of creepy William H Macy in Shameless, the skinning of the brilliance of Skins, the official doglegging of The Office, the hackneying of Hachi, the wringing of the Ring and now talk of remaking the Inbetweeners which sits morally somewhere in between genocide and unleashing a WMD. Why not just go all the way and remake classics like This is England, Australia and Big Trouble in Little China.

Admittedly you have adopted, mastered and really enhanced many foreign creations, like the motorcar, democracy and imperialism. If I wasn’t armed with gauntlets I would be afraid to write this for fear of imitation by you, changing the font to size 48, with animation, added sugar a crass backing voiceover and some sort of NASCAR wallpaper. It’s time now to stop taking square-pegged, archetypal and iconic works of cinematic brilliance from abroad and trying to shove them into the round holes of your television and film industries, so to speak.

Kyrani