There's a particular kind of feeling that washes over a British person when they hear their favourite show is being remade for American audiences. It sits somewhere between pride and existential dread — like watching someone order a full English and then drown it in maple syrup. Technically still breakfast. Spiritually, a disaster.
Hollywood has been nicking our formats since at least the 1970s, convinced that US viewers simply cannot handle accents, grey skies, or humour that doesn't come with a laugh track. Sometimes they're right to give it a go. Sometimes the results are so catastrophically off-brand that the original creators presumably stare at the ceiling at 3am wondering where it all went wrong.
We've gone through the archives, rewatched the evidence, and assigned each adaptation a Flip Rating — our completely official, entirely scientific measure of whether Hollywood honoured the source material or flipped the soul clean out of it.
The Office (UK: 2001 | US: 2005–2013)
Let's start with the elephant in the Slough trading estate. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant's The Office was a masterpiece of cringe, awkwardness, and deeply British workplace misery. David Brent wasn't just a bad boss — he was a specific kind of bad boss. The sort you've definitely worked for, or sat next to on the bus.
The American version, starring Steve Carell as Michael Scott, was initially met with enormous scepticism — and the first series largely deserved it. But then something remarkable happened: the show found its own feet. It ran for nine series, spawned genuine fan favourites, and became one of the most-streamed shows in television history.
Does it replace the original? Absolutely not. Is it actually brilliant in its own right? Begrudgingly, yes.
Flip Rating: 7/10 — Flipped the format, kept the heart. Annoying, but we respect the hustle.
Ghosts (UK: 2019–Present | US: 2021–Present)
The BBC's Ghosts — created by and starring the cast of Horrible Histories — is one of the warmest, most inventive British comedies in years. A crumbling manor house stuffed with spirits from different historical eras? Genuinely charming television.
The CBS version swaps the English country pile for a Hudson Valley mansion and updates the historical ghosts to fit American history. It's... actually quite good? The US version leans slightly broader and more wholesome (naturally), but it respects the premise and clearly has affection for the source material.
The original still wins on sheer wit and the particular British talent for making something look effortlessly low-budget while being brilliantly written. But the American Ghosts earns its place at the table.
Flip Rating: 6.5/10 — Competent haunting. Different vibes, same house energy.
Skins (UK: 2007–2013 | US: 2011)
Oh, this one. This one.
E4's Skins was raw, chaotic, occasionally devastating television that captured something genuinely true about being young and reckless in Britain. It launched the careers of Nicholas Hoult, Dev Patel, and Kaya Scodelario, and it had absolutely no business being as good as it was.
MTV's American remake lasted exactly one series before being quietly cancelled, widely criticised, and largely forgotten. The production famously reproduced scripts almost word-for-word from the original — which somehow made it worse, not better. Strip away the Bristol backdrop, the particular British brand of nihilism, and the sense that these kids were genuinely unsupervised, and you're left with... nothing that makes sense.
Some shows are products of their place. Skins was Bristol, 2007. You cannot simply relocate that to Baltimore and expect the same result.
Flip Rating: 2/10 — They flipped it so hard it snapped. A cautionary tale.
The IT Crowd (UK: 2006–2013 | US: Never Actually Aired)
This one's a fascinating footnote. NBC commissioned a US pilot of Graham Linehan's beloved IT comedy — and it was so comprehensively terrible that it was never broadcast. Joel McHale starred in a near-identical recreation of the original that somehow managed to sand off every single joke in the process.
The pilot leaked online years later and remains essential viewing as a masterclass in how not to adapt British comedy. Richard Ayoade's Moss was replaced with a character who explained the jokes. The jokes did not need explaining. The jokes needed not explaining.
Flip Rating: 0/10 — Technically doesn't count since it never aired, but we're marking it anyway. Crimes must be recorded.
Queer as Folk (UK: 1999 | US: 2000–2005)
Russell T Davies' groundbreaking Channel 4 drama ran for two series and fundamentally changed what British television thought it could say about gay life. Bold, explicit, and unapologetically Manchester.
The American Showtime version relocated to Pittsburgh, softened some edges, and ran for five series. It built its own devoted fanbase and handled representation with genuine care — arguably reaching audiences the original never could given its limited run. A rare case where the longer American format actually gave the story room to breathe.
Flip Rating: 7.5/10 — Different show, different city, different era. But the spirit survived the flight.
So Who Actually Wins?
Here's the honest verdict: the format always wins. British television has an extraordinary track record of inventing formats — the mockumentary workplace comedy, the found-family supernatural sitcom, the unflinching youth drama — that translate commercially even when the cultural texture doesn't survive the crossing.
The shows that work in translation tend to have a universal emotional core beneath the British specificity. The Office was always about loneliness and the need to be liked — that's not a Slough thing, that's a human thing.
The ones that fail are usually the ones that mistake surface for substance — that think the jokes are the point, when really the setting, the class dynamics, the particular grey-sky melancholy is doing all the heavy lifting.
America can have our formats. We'll keep the originals. And we'll keep watching the remakes with one eyebrow permanently raised, because frankly, that's half the fun.
Got a strong opinion about a British-to-American remake we missed? The comments are right there. Be the chaos you wish to see in the world.
