original photo Luke Frazza/AFP
When Time Warner Cable announced they would be adding BBC America, I could hardly contain my excitement. I’ve been a huge Anglophile since I was ten years old, and my favorite shows have almost always been British – especially British mysteries. My cat, for instance, is named for Hercule Poirot’s sidekick. He will answer to Hastings but prefers Captain Hastings. (That sounds a whole lot dorkier written down than when I say it.)
Watching BBC America makes it obvious that there are dozens of people in Hollywood and New York who are making a tidy living by copying British shows for American TV. It’s not a new phenomenon, as you may know: Sanford and Son was a remake of Steptoe and Son, Three’s Company came from a show called Man About the House, and the US Congress show on C-Span is a shameless ripoff of Fawlty Towers. Even the apex (or nadir) of American television, the reality show, originated in the UK with a show called Castaway, which dumped a bunch of whiny jerks on a Scottish island and forced them to learn how to make bread and husband sheep. I noticed tonight that Airport, which follows people around Heathrow airport, has been copied for A&E. I turned it off after three minutes when the first situation involved a Southwest employee dealing with a man who had soiled his trousers. That kind of reality I don’t need to see.
My favorite British reality show is called Faking It, in which they give someone one month to learn enough about a particular topic to try to fool a panel of judges into thinking they are experts. One show took a classical cellist and turned her into a club DJ. Another featured a country vicar trying to convince people that he was an Essex used car salesman. In most of the shows, the fakers form a strong bond with their mentors, and often succeed in fooling the judges. This week’s show, however, took a professional video game tester and tried to turn him into a race car driver. He failed horribly, not only in his task, but also in endearing himself to his mentors. At the end of the show, one called him “an arrogant twat,” and the other said he hoped never to see him again.
I’m wondering how long the show can last before they run out of plausible subjects for fakery and start reaching too far. “This week on Faking It, we’ll watch as Trevor, a butcher’s apprentice from North London, tries to fool a panel of doctors into believing he’s a brain surgeon.”
I’m fascinated by the idea that someone with a month of intensive training can pass as an authority in almost any given field. It’s fun to watch on TV. It’s less enjoyable when your boss seems to have followed the same route.
If you could spend a month learning how to fake something, what would you choose?
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