Red Dwarf Extras Season 05 Extra 05 - Dwarfing USA 

In any language, in any country, with any actors... even in the UK... there is no way a remake could be good. It was all very unique. Even the lack of budget in the beginning was part of the show.

Honestly for all the stories I've heard about it, seeing these clips now, it's not as bad as I imagined. High praise, I know.

wow what an amazing story! shout out to those catering services!!!

So much potential. We couldn't localize Coupling, either. To be honest, it's amazing we did The Office alright.

Danny John Jules saying the best Lister would be John Belushi is both the greatest compliment and burn of all time.

Bless Robert, he stayed loyal to his British buds and wasn’t taken in by the Hollywood glamor or payday. I think the American Red Dwarf had potential despite being poorly written but I’m glad it never took off. I’d be like an American Doctor Who simply not right. Only The Office has made the transfer well every other American adaptation of a UK or Australian show is terrible.

Fascinating watch

Sounds like someone high up in the American production was on a massive ego trip. They didn't want it to be good, they wanted it to be theirs.

Hmm, despite how bad the American Red Dwarf was, I actually often watch it now and again. Plus I went to the trouble of downloading both pilots, in poor VHS quality, and did my own edit mixing the poor quality with the high quality clips from this Dwarfing USA documentary. And also clips from British Red Dwarf as they used a lot of stock footage, mostly of the original studio model of the ship.

I love Doug Naylor’s analysis: “Most of the problems were in the first 15 minutes, then there was some quite good one liners, then the ending was terrible.” This is in a 23 minute show? So what? About 30 seconds of decent material from an army of writers?

5:30 oh the regret

American Pilots were cool. it just turned out to be much better as a UK show, for a numbdr of reasons.

I think most British shows don't work when remade by the U.S, because the humour is so different between countries. AND...how can you have Fawlty Towers with out Basil?!?

I like Jane Leeves, but her Holly is no Hattie Hayridge

So like...this is probably gonna piss off alot of my fellow brits but i genuinely thought that pilot had potential. I could buy American Lister as kind of an homeless, western/cowboy like drifter going from one planet to another rather than the cosmic slob he was in the original, I enjoyed the new Cat and female Holly. But Rimmer....yeh only Chris Barrie could pull off Rimmer.

One of the reasons why the American pilot version is so reviled, is because it comes in the shadow of one of the best British Sitcoms ever made, in the top 10, alongside great series like Fawlty Towers and Black Adder, is Red Dwarf, truly one of the best, and to have this essentially cheap cash grab from the USA, staining the reputation of such a great show is why the USA pilot really does deserve the hate, at least the producers of it deserve the hate, not the actors. The Actors were doing jobs to pay their bills, but the motivations for NBC to make it came down to being quite scummy.

And then from that point on a lot of the scenes with the new script for various reasons didn’t get shot, in other words sabotage! The American producers knew they weren’t getting their own script on it so they thought they’d sabotage any chance of The New script getting filmed.

Has there ever been a British comedy USA remake that was successful (for that read any bloody good lol) why don't they learn from us we don't try to remake theirs we just show the originals even though we can't always understand their humour

Fortunately, the US almost always fail at making American versions of shows because they can't help but meddle.

We had some guys from cheers (sniffs) and some guys from friends (sniffs).. are they all cocaine addicts in Hollywood

Why do American always want to remake our comedy shows? We speak the same language

Excellent show.... so glad to hear that they really had no interest in america, I agree... I have zero interest in america :)

14:11 This cat is quite clearly pregnant. He is?

I'm sure glad the American version was squashed because the pilot proved it to be God awful..

These guys are blind if they think this Craig Beercoat or whatever he's called is stunningly handsome.

Yep it was terrible and ironically the only funny character in it was the one from the UK series. Is that how American sitcoms are made then with the writers all thinking up one-liners to the fit dialogue around rather than setting stuff up to invite the joke?