Category: The TV Biz

Why Do We Keep Rebooting and Remaking and Rewinding and…?

Turns out it’s because…humans. It’s how we’re wired. Day-am, kids. Day-am it to hell!

“Self Portrait 1889? remake by Seth Johnson
“Self Portrait 1889? remake by Seth Johnson

by Annalee Newitz

It’s the question that every movie [and TV] fan asks in summer: why are there so many remakes and sequels and reboots? It turns out that science may have an answer. Unfortunately, if you’re hoping for more original stories, the prognosis is not good.

Two network theorists in the Netherlands, Folgert Karsdorp and Antal van den Bosch, just published a study on story networks in Royal Society Open Science. Story networks, they write, are “streams of retellings in which retellers modify and adapt retellings in a gradual and accumulative way.” There is also a basic structure that seems to underly how these networks function. To explore retellings, the researchers looked at more than 200 versions of the Little Red Riding Hood story, which had been retold over the past two centuries. They measured the stories’ similarity to one another with the amusingly named “bag-of-words” technique, which reveals how many words two texts have in common. Then they created a network diagram showing relatedness between stories over time. Earlier stories became what the researchers called “pre-texts” that inspired later retellings. read article

America: where British sitcoms go to die

Considering how off the mark U.S. adaptations of UK sitcoms often are, the writer of the following article wonders why British comedy series creators look forward to seeing their work produced on our side of the pond. But to us at TVWriter™ the question is more along the lines of, “Why can’t American writers get UK comedies right?” (Hint: We don’t see this as the writers’ fault at all.)

THE THICK OF IT failed on U.S. Network TV but is running strong on cable as VEEP
THE THICK OF IT failed on U.S. Network TV but is running strong on cable as VEEP

by Andrew Collins

Imagine an alternative universe where Dad’s Army, The Young Ones, The Thick of It and Spaced never got past the pilot stage and Fawlty Towers was cancelled midway through series one. Well, that nightmarish world exists: it’s called the United States, and it’s the place where the brightest and best British sitcoms go to die.

Caitlin and Caroline Moran’s semi-autobiographical Raised By Wolves, about two sisters growing up in a large family in Wolverhampton, is the latest Britcom to arouse transatlantic interest. The Channel 4 original makes its US debut this week on streaming service Acorn. But, more mouth-wateringly, a deal for an American version has been agreed with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno, Young Adult) hired to write the pilot. Caitlin tells me she is “staggered” by the US interest: “When you set a sitcom in Wolverhampton, you’re obviously not expecting that.” But, despite all the flag-waving goodwill and agape expectation, it has little hope of succeeding, statistically at least. read article

Indie Video: The Rock’s New YouTube Channel

Our ever-changing entertainment structure often is a most wonderful thing to behold. Great ideas coming from out of nowhere and captivating thousands – sometimes hundreds of thousands – of viewers.

In this short promo for his new YouTube Channel, a certain Dwayne Johnson shows what you can do with talent, a great sense of humor, and what looks like one whole gobsmacking bunch of dinero. (But really isn’t because talent.)

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What the Consumer Shift to Streaming Video Really Means

The consumer shift from watching TV on, you know, our TV sets to on our phones, tablets, and last but not least PCs, means that the entire look and feeling of being online is going to change dramatically, not necessarily for the better (although it’s good to know that interweb audience tastes are actually being considered).

But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what the experts have to say:

intonow read article