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Peep Show US Remake with wimmin'

Started by cliggg, May 27, 2019, 11:23:11 AM

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Scrapey Fish

#60
Is the POV / inner monologue thing a gimmick? I've always considered it inspired, opening up so many new doors for humour. So much so I was surprised that there wasn't a glut of peep show copies in the UK. It's no surprise to me that the US wants a piece of the action

Goldentony

nice box of sidewalk you got there, pretty expensive as I recall

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Peep Show, the best bits anyway, were about showing their motivations and neuroses as being idiotic, selfish, and obsessive. Most character comedy generally involves case studies of male wreckage. There is something about the pathos of male failure, the impotence and suppressed rage/fear that works instinctively due to our recognition of traditional gender roles and the pressure of men to live up to them.

The equivalents I can think of with female central characters are either quite vicious and nasty, centred on the individual themselves rather than their gender, or quite vacant and banal Miranda Hart/Sarah Millican style 'eh girls' comedy of recognition where they are acting as a surrogate so the audience can go Me, that's Me, that's what I did!

Aside of all that thinking out loud I've done above, the Sophie's Peep Show dvd extra was one of the least funny things I've ever seen, including everything not trying to be funny which is a fucking lot of stuff. That has no bearing on whether this will be good though, it just underlined she was a screamingly uninteresting and sloppily written character.

olliebean

Quote from: Captain Z on June 02, 2019, 05:02:34 PM
...and also the name. I mean, Woman Feelings?

That's not what it's called, is it? Can't find anything online about that title. I hope not, as that would be a truly monumentally awful title.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: Scrapey Fish on June 02, 2019, 07:04:35 PM
Is the POV / inner monologue thing a gimmick? I've always considered it inspired, opening up so many new doors for humour.
The inner monologue is definitely not a gimmick, but I'm not so sure about the POV camera. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one instance in which it really enhanced the comedy (when Big Suze is tripping and Superhans gets right up in her face to tell her that a bad trip is "fuckin' 'orrible!"

I think it might be a holdover from early plans for the show, when it just revolved around the characters watching telly.

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on June 02, 2019, 10:00:13 PM
The inner monologue is definitely not a gimmick, but I'm not so sure about the POV camera. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one instance in which it really enhanced the comedy (when Big Suze is tripping and Superhans gets right up in her face to tell her that a bad trip is "fuckin' 'orrible!"

I think it might be a holdover from early plans for the show, when it just revolved around the characters watching telly.

The sex scenes were always made funnier with the POV style, specifically Mark with the teenage goth in series one.

Ferris

Quote from: olliebean on June 02, 2019, 08:33:16 PM
That's not what it's called, is it? Can't find anything online about that title. I hope not, as that would be a truly monumentally awful title.

It's a clever gender-reversal of Hans (and Jez's?) band, Man Feelings. That is Hans' explanation on where the name came from.

I think Jez was thrown out of the band, which is reconfirmed while they were playing in zoot-suits (the clarification was that he he is not in the band, "merely dressed like" the band).

ZoyzaSorris

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on June 02, 2019, 10:00:13 PM
The inner monologue is definitely not a gimmick, but I'm not so sure about the POV camera. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one instance in which it really enhanced the comedy (when Big Suze is tripping and Superhans gets right up in her face to tell her that a bad trip is "fuckin' 'orrible!"

I think it might be a holdover from early plans for the show, when it just revolved around the characters watching telly.

Surely the inner monologue and the POV camera are pretty inseparable though, ie the former works because of the latter?

dallasman

Fwiw, I didn't mean "gimmick" disparagingly, and probably should've used "format" or some other neutral term to describe the combination of POV camera and inner monologue audio. However shit (or not) this remake/remodel turns out to be, it'll at least be interesting to see another take on that.

Incidentally, I went off on a little John Cleese binge on YouTube about a month ago, before this new/old scandal twitterupted, and I caught a documentary featuring clips from the American Fawlty Towers remake. That looked like a real turkey, but I haven't bothered watching a whole episode. Here's the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrYH12RHdls

Shows you just how useless remakes can be, even with men in the lead, but if I'd posted that in the John Cleese thread, people would say I was celebrating a vile racist with a history of misogyny and sexual assault, who regularly beat minorities and tricked a lovely old man into saying the n-word on national television. Probably. And now this Peep Show remake is just daring me to hate it because it pointlessly replaces two regular, inadequate blokes with two cute ladies. Uh-uh. Not falling for it. Bring it on, and let it fail or succeed on its own terms. If anything, the gender switch takes some of the stress off of having to match the Mitchell/Webb chemistry. And, as this forum proves, the wider Peep Show fan base definitely does include upwards of five women, one or more of whom might have always wanted a lady version, but were too shy and ladylike to speak up.

dallasman

One more thing: I did eventually watch the female Ghostbusters, with my daughter, who was the same age I was when I was twice transfixed in the cinema by the original. I said or did nothing to sway her, and she herself volunteered the opinion that it wasn't as good as the original, which she'd recently watched with friends. It wasn't funny, and the plot was a mess. Not my words - the words of a little girl!

keir


St_Eddie

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on June 02, 2019, 11:02:27 PM
Surely the inner monologue and the POV camera are pretty inseparable though, ie the former works because of the latter?

I was about to say the same thing.  It would be pretty darn difficult to get the inner monologue to work without the first person POV.

Icehaven

Are there many/any examples of films or TV shows with predominantly female characters being remade with men? Like The Golden Boys or something?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: St_Eddie on June 03, 2019, 12:55:15 AM
I was about to say the same thing.  It would be pretty darn difficult to get the inner monologue to work without the first person POV.
Things like The Simpsons or About a Boy,  have made it work.

ZoyzaSorris

Im not sure about the exact examples you have in mind but do they have inner monologues from two characters as such an integral part of the entire program/film from start to finish?

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

About a Boy sprang to mind because I remember wondering if it had been a direct influence on Peep Show. It did the thing of having a character say one thing and think the opposite.
Films and telly have done voiceovers for decades, without the need to literally go inside the characters' heads. I wonder if the show didn't make a rod for its own back with the POV camera. While it might have made sex scenes and drug trips funnier, it could also have shut down other opportunities for visual jokes. It's a common technique, so a more traditionally filmed show could still have used it when necessary.

Scrapey Fish

Quote from: dallasman on June 02, 2019, 11:40:27 PM
One more thing: I did eventually watch the female Ghostbusters, with my daughter, who was the same age I was when I was twice transfixed in the cinema by the original. I said or did nothing to sway her, and she herself volunteered the opinion that it wasn't as good as the original, which she'd recently watched with friends. It wasn't funny, and the plot was a mess. Not my words - the words of a little girl!

I'm not sure what to what degree you're joking but I'm going to take the opportunity give my opinion anyway, which is that Ghostbusters was let down by a weak script rather than the gender swap. All the the actors are doing their level best with piss weak material, including a particularly strong performance from the talented Kate McKinnon

Petey Pate

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on June 03, 2019, 01:34:26 PM
About a Boy sprang to mind because I remember wondering if it had been a direct influence on Peep Show. It did the thing of having a character say one thing and think the opposite.

One direct influence Bain and Armstrong have cited on Peep Show is the scene in Annie Hall where the thoughts of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton's characters appear as subtitles.

dallasman

Quote from: Scrapey Fish on June 03, 2019, 02:09:46 PM
I'm not sure what to what degree you're joking but I'm going to take the opportunity give my opinion anyway, which is that Ghostbusters was let down by a weak script rather than the gender swap. All the the actors are doing their level best with piss weak material, including a particularly strong performance from the talented Kate McKinnon

I was doing a "voice", if you will, but fwiw, that was all true. I didn't think it was great, and neither did my kid, who was 9 or 10 at the time. I'm a regular SNL viewer, though, and I worship at Kate McKinnon's feet, so I absolutely agree that the cast are doing their best. But the movie relied too much on them "being characters", if that makes sense. And they were being characters I vaguely recognized from SNL, but had difficulty placing in my faint mental map of Ghostbusters New York. They seemed to be just moving around some kind of interactive theme park, being weird, sassy and clever in the face of the various attractions.

I'm not particularly attached to Ghostbusters, but it was one of my top cinema experiences back in the day, so objectivity requires some degree of effort. In this case, I had no problem rooting for the girls, hoping they would have a compelling adventure, because I like everyone involved, and I do genuinely and sincerely welcome more diversity, long as there's a point to it beyond "it's time to have an X type movie for Y type people". And I didn't think it couldn't be done, even with a beloved brand like Ghostbusters. Stranger things have happened. In the event, though, I just didn't think it was very good, and I didn't like the look of it either, despite a few good designs. It was just absloute overkill with the garishly glowing CGI monsters everywhere, whereas the comparatively cheap effects in the original really felt like intruders from an entirely different world.

Bringing it back to Peep Show, I think that's a much less risky case of remake tampering. It's more recent, so the fanbase won't be as touchy/dickish as the "you raped my childhood!" crowd. And with it being a Brit-US adaptation, a makeover is pretty much a given anyway. In both cases one might say "make up your own damn franchise, you greedy, lazy fucks", but, y'know, it's a business, and the the proof of their pudding is in the eating. I've no particular apetite for further servings of FemiGhostbusters, but I'm going to try me a spoonful of that LadyPeepShow, see if it agrees with me. If it doesn't succeed, that doesn't necessarily mean they would've made anything better from scratch, and if it's great, that won't necessarily be down to the imported pudding powder. Yummy pudding. I've made myself hungry for pudding now. All I want is pudding. Give me pudding and let me eat it. Ladypudding please, with a spoon.

ZoyzaSorris

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on June 03, 2019, 01:34:26 PM
About a Boy sprang to mind because I remember wondering if it had been a direct influence on Peep Show. It did the thing of having a character say one thing and think the opposite.
Films and telly have done voiceovers for decades, without the need to literally go inside the characters' heads. I wonder if the show didn't make a rod for its own back with the POV camera. While it might have made sex scenes and drug trips funnier, it could also have shut down other opportunities for visual jokes. It's a common technique, so a more traditionally filmed show could still have used it when necessary.

I think we have to distinguish the standard character point of view voiceover you seem to be referring to, which has a wide usage over many decades, with the extreme and fundamentally embedded way the character monologues are used in Peep Show. They make up a large proportion of the overall script, and for both the main characters roughly equally. I still maintain that they wouldnt have worked in nearly the same way without the POV filming. Try and imagine Peep show with the same script but conventional camera angles. Doesnt work in my head, anyway.

St_Eddie

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on June 03, 2019, 10:33:21 PM
I think we have to distinguish the standard character point of view voiceover you seem to be referring to, which has a wide usage over many decades, with the extreme and fundamentally embedded way the character monologues are used in Peep Show. They make up a large proportion of the overall script, and for both the main characters roughly equally. I still maintain that they wouldnt have worked in nearly the same way without the POV filming. Try and imagine Peep show with the same script but conventional camera angles. Doesnt work in my head, anyway.

Indeed.  A comparison with shows which have used also inner monologues but sparingly, relative to Peep Show, doesn't hold water.  The show's very foundation and premise is built around hearing the characters inner monologues.  As you say, the scripts as written really couldn't be reasonably filmed under conventional means and even if they could, it would be less ergonomic and accommodating than with the first person POV.  The point being that the first person perspective isn't arbitrary or a gimmick.  It's fundamentally supportive of the entire premise of the show; that of hearing the characters inner monologues.

Solid Jim

The premise of Peep Show is that there are two people sharing a flat, and their personalities contrast in a way likely to cause amusing situations. This is also the premise of 95% of all sitcoms ever made. I always assumed the POV stuff was just thrown in because you can't actually bring that to a commissioning editor without anything else. It also means that any remake will stand or fall on its own merits, not by its fidelity to the grand vision and worldbuilding of the original show. Write a sitcom, film it in first-person perspective, it will either be good or bad. (Or mediocre.)

neveragain

It was first brought to commissioners as a Beavis and Butthead-style commentary on TV type-show, with the characters unseen, so the voiceover aspect has always been there.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

I bet the two main characters will have lovely teeth. It just won't look right.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Quote from: ZoyzaSorris on June 03, 2019, 10:33:21 PM
I think we have to distinguish the standard character point of view voiceover you seem to be referring to, which has a wide usage over many decades, with the extreme and fundamentally embedded way the character monologues are used in Peep Show. They make up a large proportion of the overall script, and for both the main characters roughly equally. I still maintain that they wouldnt have worked in nearly the same way without the POV filming. Try and imagine Peep show with the same script but conventional camera angles. Doesnt work in my head, anyway.
I don't see the distinction. Sure, the voiceovers in Peep show are more stream of consciousness than most and they make up a large chunk of the speech, but I don't see how either of those factors necessitates the first person filming style. The show would frequently use another perspective, even a bystander's, so we could see Mark and Jeremy while hearing their thoughts anyway.

St_Eddie

I don't see how it would benefit the show to have dropped the first person POV, other than a potential increase in viewership.  Well, bollocks to that.  I don't want a watered down show, designed to appeal to the masses.  I like Peep Show the way that it is, thank you very much, POV and all.  If some people struggle with that, then go and watch something else because clearly the show's not for you.

olliebean

From Wikipedia:

QuoteThe POV technique separates Peep Show from other sitcoms and Mitchell claims that without it Peep Show would be similar to shows like Spaced and Men Behaving Badly.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

You can climb down off that horse, Eddie. No one is talking about watering down anyone's precious artistic vision. My point, if I even have one, is that I'm not sure the POV camera is actually essential, unlike Spaced, in which the directorial style really is integral to the show.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth on June 04, 2019, 05:40:11 PM
You can climb down off that horse, Eddie. No one is talking about watering down anyone's precious artistic vision. My point, if I even have one, is that I'm not sure the POV camera is actually essential, unlike Spaced, in which the directorial style really is integral to the show.

Why does something have to be essential for it to be utalised?  The point being that first person POV works (as well as providing the show with its own USP), so I don't really see the worth in debating its inclusion.