I’m Losing It
Ab Fab: Don’t Mess With the Classics!
Hands off Patsy and Edina!
-Judy McGuire
There are some things so naturally flawless you just don’t mess with them. My friend Rose’s meatballs. The first Clash album. And Absolutely Fabulous. Yet Fox TV just announced they’re doing a remake. Sigh. Why American TV execs keep mining the U.K. for series ideas is beyond me. Do we have no ideas of our own? Did you ever see the hilarious BBC show Coupling? We remade that over here, and it tanked. Why? Because the American version sucked.
Haven’t U.S. producers learned that we can’t Americanize (and inevitably sanitize) Brit TV for our market? It never works. OK, hardly ever. Sure, there’s The Office, but before that there were three highly unsuccessful remakes of Fawlty Towers, one snoozer redo of Queer as Folk and – though it’s very successful – the American version of What Not to Wear is like an anemic third cousin of the original Trinny and Suze version.
Another reason the new Ab Fab is doomed to fail is because Americans are too uptight about lushes and portraying drug use in anything but a highly negative light. Can you imagine a prime-time actress snorting coke on-screen and not ending up in rehab?
I can’t even imagine whom they’ll get to play Patsy and Edina – most American actresses are too concerned with looking good to ever really get down and dirty as required (unless your name is Charlize Theron, and you’re wearing a fat suit to “prove” – snort – your mettle as an actress). Even though certain ladies are as Botoxed as Patsy would surely be (Hullo, Marcia Cross!), I don’t see them poking fun at themselves. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m betting the American imitator will be approximately as successful as you’d be if you handed Patsy a flute of Mountain Dew and tried to pass it off as Veuve Clicquot.