It has been called “the longest walk in history” by Ant and Dec, the show’s
hosts. Simon Cowell, the notoriously scathing judge on Britain’s Got Talent,
walked slowly down the studio steps last night gladhanding every loose palm
that he could see.
He had plenty of time. Whatever the outcome – and last night’s final of the
ITV talent show was a close call between a quartet of glamorous string
players, a 12-year-old schoolgirl with an angelic voice and a dancing dog –
Cowell was the real winner. As well as being its star turn, he also invented
the programme.
Last night it drew an estimated 12m viewers against 8m for the BBC’s I’d Do
Anything, a search to find the new Nancy for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
forthcoming West End production of Oliver!
While Cowell is a big star in Britain, he is a megastar in America. His other
reality show in the States, American Idol, also a talent-finding offering,
finished its run as the country’s top-rated programme 11 days ago,
attracting 40m viewers.
The schedulers at the Fox network did not miss a beat, filling the slot it
vacated with So You Think You Can Dance, another reality show with a
self-evident theme. It also went straight to the top of the TV ratings and
managed to increase its audience last Thursday night in its second week.
These two top-rated American programmes share more significant and intriguing
characteristics. Both were originated by Brits, are produced by Brits and
have British judges: Cowell on Idol and Nigel Lythgoe on Dance. The latter
is also hosted by Cat Deeley, a 31-year-old from Sutton Coldfield who has
risen a long way since her early days on children’s television in the UK.
The success of British television imports like these and others, such as
Dancing With the Stars, a close clone of the BBC show Strictly Come Dancing,
and America’s Got Talent, which Cowell took to America after its British
launch was delayed, has been astonishing.
So has the sudden success of dozens of British actors in US television series.
Hugh Laurie can be counted as America’s biggest television star. Best known
in Britain for his comedy partnership with Stephen Fry and roles in the
Blackadder series, Laurie is earning hundreds of thousands of dollars an
episode as the misanthropic drug-addicted medical problem-solving Dr Gregory
House.
House, the top-rated drama series on US television, is modelled on another
British import, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories.
Anna Friel, formerly of the Liverpool-based soap Brookside, is winning rave
reviews as well for her role in the drama-comedy Pushing Daisies.
There are also numerous British-originated drama and comedy series such as The
Office, Life on Mars, Peep Show and Gavin & Stacey being remade by US
networks.
The cumulative effect of this flood of British programming and entertainers is
being called the “second British invasion”, a reference to the way British
pop groups such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones reintroduced America
to the rock’n’roll that it had invented but forgotten in the 1960s.
Now British television entertainers are having an effect on the popular
culture of 21st-century America that may turn out to be just as profound and
far-reaching. IN the past decade the British have originated and perfected a
style of reality television, from contest shows such as Pop Idol, Who Wants
To Be a Millionaire? and Strictly Come Dancing, to situation-based
unscripted shows such as Survivor.
These programmes now dominate American television at the expense of the
sitcoms and TV dramas such as Baywatch, M*A*S*H and ER that were once
ubiquitous and exported all over the world.
Even Americans have been forced to acknowledge the impact of British
power-players such as Simon Fuller, the pop svengali. He originated Pop
Idol, which has been transformed into American Idol (starring Cowell,
inevitably), and co-produces So You Think You Can Dance.
“He’s changing American culture as we speak,” said Peter Liguori, president of
entertainment for the Fox network.
Robert Thompson, professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse
University, traces the British-inspired reality TV boom back to the American
MTV series Real World, which was first broadcast in 1992 in the United
States.
It featured a group of young people who did not know one another but were
forced to live in a house together for a few months. Their every move –
romances, rows and drunken indulgences – was filmed. Although Real World,
which still runs on MTV, is not a competition, it was the obvious template
for what later became Big Brother and Survivor.
“That was a new idea,” said Thompson. “But the rest of the US TV universe
completely ignored it. Network TV executives had no idea what an incredible
invention had just occurred. In the UK, however, they didn’t ignore it.”
At that time British broadcasting, after the introduction of new cable and
satellite channels, had become much more competitive and innovative.
“It reminds you of the trajectory of rock’n’roll,” Thompson said. “It starts
in America. It goes over to the UK for a little cultural laundering and
comes back in the form of the British invasion. That’s exactly what happened
with reality TV.
“And then, because Survivor and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? came from the
UK and were monster hits, everybody asks: what else have they got?”
Despite the apparent hunger of the US networks for new programming, they were
still conservative and fearful of formats other than the sitcoms and
scripted dramas which had been successful staples for more than half a
century.
Fuller and Cowell faced brick walls when they first tried to get US network
executives interested in an American version of Pop Idol, after it aired in
the UK in 2001.
American Idol, which has just finished its seventh series, has since become a
cultural phenomenon, although much berated for its homogenising effect on
the music business.
Even after Idol and other British imports had become huge ratings winners, the
networks balked at trying out other formats that had been big winners on
British TV.
BBC Worldwide was “turned down point-blank” when it tried to sell Strictly
Come Dancing to the American television networks. Conrad Green, the British
producer who is now the executive producer of Dancing With the Stars, the
American version now broadcast by ABC, recalled: “One network president
said, ‘If that works, I should resign’.”
The show has just completed its sixth series in three years.
Cowell has stunned American audiences with his mean bloke shtick. Even his
fellow judges have been aghast. In the first season of American Idol, Randy
Jackson angrily berated Cowell for one of his nasty remarks about a
contestant.
“You can’t call people losers,” Jackson shouted. “This is America. We don’t do
this.”
Of course, Cowell’s politically incorrect and apparently off-the-cuff remarks
have been a huge part of the show’s appeal to American viewers who are used
to much blander television.
“Cowell’s still 60% of that show in terms of what people talk about,” said
Cynthia Littleton, who writes about the industry for Variety, the trade
publication.
While British actors have long made a career out of playing “baddies” in
Hollywood movies, for many Americans this is the first time they have
realised that all Brits are not the very stuffy and stiff-upper-lipped
Brideshead Revisited or Room With a View caricatures.
“Part of that we got from many years of classy cultural programming on PBS,
the public broadcasting network,” said Thompson. “Now the ‘mean Brit’ has
become an obligatory addition to these talent-oriented programmes.”
Other “mean Brits” who have become huge stars on American reality TV include
Piers Morgan, the former Daily Mirror editor who is one of the judges on
America’s Got Talent, and the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, with his
expletive-laced diatribes on the enormously successful US version of the
cooking contest show Hell’s Kitchen, another UK invention.
Americans love to repeat one of Ramsay’s most famous tirades, which came after
he was asked for more pumpkin by a contestant. After informing his hapless
victim that he would insert said pumpkin into his backside, he then
screamed: “Would you like it whole or diced?”
These days Americans cannot get enough of being shouted at and chastised by
Brits. They even want Brits to tell them how to bring up their children.
Supernanny, hosted by the British nanny Jo Frost, is also a huge American TV
hit.
“We have never really gotten over our inferiority complex,” said Thompson.
“When they hear someone talking British English, most Americans immediately
assume that person is more cultured and more intelligent. And if you are
rude and outspoken and hyper-candid like a Simon Cowell or a Gordon Ramsay,
what more could you want? That’s great television.”
Deeley believes that what has made Brits like her so successful in the United
States is that they have brought a different, much looser and more intimate
style to American television, something she first mastered on the morning
children’s show SMTV Live.
“When I look at American TV it looks a little bit Stepford Wives [the 1975
film in which women are replaced by robots],” said Deeley. “Everything is so
perfect, so placed, the lines are so ‘said’.
“Whereas in Britain that’s not how we do it at all. It should be like talking
to your friend. Because when it’s good is when you really engage with
somebody.”
Economic reasons have also played their role in the success of these
programmes. US television networks were badly affected by the three-month
writers’ strike, which ended in February, and had to fill scheduling gaps
when they “ran out” of prerecorded episodes of their hit dramas and
comedies. Largely extemporised and cheap to produce – about $1m an hour,
compared with $3m for scripted work – reality shows fitted the bill.
They also appealed to a young generation of viewers who are switching off
their sets and migrating to the internet. Aware of this trend, NBC recently
announced the eight new series that it would promote in advance of its
Olympics coverage later this summer: seven were reality shows.
Nor has the traffic been entirely one way. The Apprentice was first a US hit
starring Donald Trump, and while Sir Alan Sugar in its British iteration has
made “You’re fired!” his catchphrase, it originated with “the Donald”.
Spin-offs of America’s Next Top Model have also been an enormous success for
the Living cable television channel in the UK.
Nevertheless, the primacy of the Brits in the reality genre cannot be denied.
Lythgoe believes the answer lies in shortcomings elsewhere. “Because the UK
doesn’t really have a major film industry, our talents went into factual
television,” he said.
Thompson believes the British reality TV shows have redefined American
television in the 21st century. “The appeal of this stuff is really
powerful,” he said. “I think by evolution human beings are voyeuristic.
Peeking into the medicine cabinets of our party hosts, listening to a couple
arguing on the subway. Reality TV allows that.
“That voyeuristic appeal, along with watching ‘regular people’ in completely
contrived situations, makes for great programming. You compare that with
seeing a 5,000th iteration of a cop show, a lawyer show,a doctor show or a
sitcom. For pure insight, the reality shows are trumping them.”
The question, of course, is when will America get bored with its fix of
British-inspired reality? Judging by the continuing domestic appetite for
Britain’s Got Talent and I’d Do Anything, it may take some time.
