American remakes of successful British shows have a mixed record
For every US Office there’s a million American versions of The Inbetweeners (cancelled after one season) and The IT Crowd (which had its pilot cancelled), so whenever there is an announcement about a brilliant UK show making the journey across the pond, trepidation is expected and merited.
With the next US remake of a British show, we are seriously hoping that it’s more Dunder Mifflin than whatever the name of the school was in the US Inbetweeners, because the brilliant BBC show People Just Do Nothing is getting remade for an American audience.
According to Variety, the project will be led by Mehar Sethi (BoJack Horseman, The Mick, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) will write and executive produce a pilot episode for Amazon:
The untitled, half-hour project is a mockumentary following a group of working class DJs and their friends in a town called North Las Vegas: a land of mini malls and vast parking lots, where the lights of The Strip act as a beacon of fame and glory that’s just out of reach. The series tracks their stumbling ambitions, and explores how relationships between friends and family evolve as the reality of peoples’ dreams starts to hit.
According to reports, the pilot (and series if it gets commissioned) will also be executive produced by the show’s creators, Hugo Chegwin, Steve Stamp, Asim Chaudhry and Allan Mustafa.
It’s hard to know exactly what to expect from this remake, but considering Sethi was the man behind two episodes of IASIP, and particularly one entitled The Gang Dines Out (screenshot below), we’re quietly confident that the US version of People Just Do Nothing could be very, very funny.
