Our American cousins – they’ll be there for us, ’cause we’re there for them too. You can almost guarantee that if a US show becomes a hit across the Atlantic, at some point it will attempt to fold a British storyline or character into the proceedings.
And it’s always met with such excitement… right up to the point when we Brits actually see it come to life on-screen. Is this what they really think of us? The bulging file of evidence says, “Yes. Yes it is.”
Here are 10 of the main offenders…
1. Friends
There was great anticipation when Friends – at the time the biggest TV show in the world – announced that it was filming some special London-based episodes, featuring a veritable smorgasbord of famous British faces.
But oh. My. Gaaawd. Richard Branson – ah yes, the famously working-class hero – as a cheery Cockney market-stall holder; Hugh Laurie as an irritable co-passenger on Rachel’s flight; June Whitfield as a snobby, grammar-Nazi housekeeper (we all have housekeepers here, amirite guys?); and, of course, Helen Baxendale as the chipper Londoner turned chippy estranged wife, Emily.
But all this was nothing compared to the wedding rehearsal dinner conflab between Elliott Gould’s Jack Geller and Tom Conti’s Steven as Emily’s money-grabbing dad. “Would be speaking German if it weren’t for us”?
Thanks guys, thanks a lot.
2. Frasier
Where to start? Daphne has one of the least convincing English accents since Kevin Costner stole from the rich and gave to the poor, which would sort of be understandable if Jane Leeves weren’t, y’know, English (just not from the North).
Daphne continually refers to bad food, chastity and outside toilets in the land she left behind for the bright lights of Seattle.
But the real clincher here is when her brothers arrive – her criminal, alcoholic, dossing, loser, football-hooligan brothers, with bad hygiene and no manners. For such a tight family, their accents seem to stem from the four corners of the UK – Simon Moon (the Australian Anthony LaPaglia) appears to be from somewhere near Walford; (Swazilander) Richard E Grant’s Stephen Moon is home counties born and bred, and (Scottish) Robbie Coltrane’s Michael Moon is a literally incomprehensible mix of Scottish and… somewhere in Cornwall, maybe?
Ironically, the sadly now-departed John Mahoney (Martin Crane) was actually Mancunian, so you would have thought that with two English actors in the main cast, they might have pointed out some of the, er… shall we call them errors? We mean, for a show that says that it’s listening…
3. Seinfeld
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Prkl7VO7yw
This may have been overlooked due to the fact that it’s the B plot of legendary episode ‘The Soup Nazi’.
Elaine flies Simon, an English guy she’s met, out to New York using her air miles. But guess what? Turns out that he’s rude, boring, moaning, tight-fisted and money-grabbing – ‘a cad’, as Jerry so eloquently labels him.
Elaine cannot wait to get rid of him – cue insults about the English, and a great sequence when her alarm fails to go off in time for him to catch the plane home.
But hey, at least this guy has a chiselled jaw and good teeth. We have to take our victories where we can find them, right?
4. Parks and Recreation
Probably the most sympathetic depiction of the English on this list, but that’s not to say it doesn’t reinforce a stereotype. Peter Serafinowicz plays Lord Edgar Covington – an affable, fun, endearing character, crucially with good teeth and healthy-looking skin. So far so good.
But that doesn’t stop him being depicted as entitled, sheltered, inbred and simple enough to become playmates with manchild Andy. It only serves to reinforce the US notion that all of us Brits somehow know (or are related to) the Queen, have some sort of estate or title, and are just a little bit backward.
What would Li’l Sebastian say?
5. Mad Men
With all the chopping and changing at Sterling Cooper / Sterling Cooper Draper Price / SCDP / Sterling Cooper & Partners, you’d be forgiven for forgetting that the original company was taken over by British firm PP&L at the end of season two.
When the new owners finally visit, they are officious and stuffy, especially their wunderkind Guy MacKendrick, who subsequently gets his foot puréed by a ride-on lawnmower. Of course he does: he’s British – he had it coming.
And then there’s Lane, poor Lane. One of the most three-dimensional characters in Mad Men, he’s awkward but optimistic about his new life in America. But not for long. Not blessed with the good looks and ease of the rest of his colleagues (because British), Lane struggles to fit in, ultimately being drowned in debt in trying to do so, and taking his own life.
He does give Pete a great sucker punch though (Queensberry rules, obviously).
6. South Park
Oh, Pip. Poor, misunderstood Pip. Never mind that Cartman couldn’t differentiate between a British and French accent, Pip got a rough ride right from the get-go of the pilot episode.
When he eventually became a main character and featured in his own Dickensian episode, all the English stereotypes were there – grey skies; toothless simpletons, haughty upper classes, Dick Van Dyke accents. Granted, it was set in Victorian times, when all of this was more true, but come on guys, throw us a bone…
7. The West Wing
Lord John Marbury – Earl of Croy, Marquess of Needham and Dolby, Baronet of Brycey, and… well we think you might get the idea. Here we are again with the old-school Brits, sporting title after title and looking delightfully rumpled in the process.
The British Ambassador to the United States is a fop and a cad, unapologetic in his smoking, drinking and womanising. Apart from the fact that he actually turns out to be a) endearing and b) quite good at his job, writer Aaron Sorkin may as well have gone to Disney and asked them to draw a cartoon English posho, with an extra helping of ‘rah’, what-what.
8. Arrested Development
Were they taking the rise out of Friends‘ depiction of London? We’ll never know. But, in what is probably the worst plotline of the generally brilliant original three seasons of AD, Michael Bluth falls in love with (South African) Charlize Theron’s ‘Rita’ – a mentally challenged Brit who likes to wear clothes inside out and jump on beds for fun.
The pursuit of MRF (which it turns out stands for ‘Mentally Retarded Female’) takes Michael to the ‘Wee Britain’ quarter of The OC (don’t call it that) where everyone has bad teeth, bad breath, eats bad food, talks like Dick Van Dyke on a bad accent day, and drives on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.
Yet all is forgiven, because Mrs Featherbottom.
9. Veep
American TV comedy comes to London. Main characters clash with the locals, who inevitably aren’t as good looking, are far paler, and are mired in tradition to the point of paralysis. The food is terrible, the staff pompous and officious and the skies overcast, if not pissing down with rain.
No characters understand the British accent (despite the British having invented the bloody language – it’s called ‘English’, guys, clue’s in the name) and misunderstandings lead to cultural clashes. Sound familiar?
Fortunately the whole shebang is saved by actually being a brilliant episode. DANIWAH!
10. Community
John Oliver loved being British so much that he moved to America, got huge, and then repatriated. And who can blame him?
As Professor Ian Duncan in the brilliant Community, he managed to stamp nearly all of our ‘American-Shows-slate-the-British’ bingo card. As well as getting our geography badly wrong –claiming to have grown up on ’52nd Street in Islington’ – obviously he’s a drunk with bad clothes, bad teeth and a bad haircut, and reminisces about his time in England with anecdotes about his thumbless auntie, and ranks Alison Brie as an eight or a ‘British ten’.
So, Mr Oliver doesn’t do the Brits any favours with our transatlantic cousins. What did we ever do to him? Oh yeah… Mock the Week.
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