I honestly can’t with the fucking hubris of Americans, how they look at TV shows that other countries have done and go, ‘Oh yeah, cool. That’s a great concept, but we can do it better!’ Like that time when they tried to do an American version of our national treasure telly series, Kath & Kim, and, to quote the Foxymorons themselves, it was REVOLTING.
It actually surprises me how many people are not aware of the fact that a U.S. version of Kath & Kim exists, not because it was groundbreaking or anything, but because it was so fkn abysmal, that its ungodly presence on this earth still sends shockwaves through the Kath & Kim fandom.
So basically the tl;dr version is that NBC got wind of the beloved Aussie series back in 2008 and crafted their own version featuring the same name, the same concept and the same slang and terminology as our Kath & Kim.
Here’s the thing, it actually had the makings for a great show, feat. iconique comedian Molly Shannen playing the Yankee Kath and qween Selma Blair as Kim, but as they soon learned, the series had a magic formula that simply could not be recreated by anyone other than our Foxymorons.
You see, the hilarity of the series is rooted in its innate Aussie-ness and the way Jane Turner and Gina Riley nail the Aussie culture with their pronunciations and such, so hearing phrases like “O-V-A-H, OVAH” with an American twist was just plain wrong.
Have a watch of the clip below and you’ll see just what I mean:
I need to wash my eyes and ears after witnessing that. Hell, I need a deep-clean of my bloody brain, if that’s at all possible.
Here’s a nice palette cleanser to sooth our aching souls:
The show bombed so hard, both in Australia and in the States, that the local network pulled it after the second episode, then NBC subsequently canned the series altogether after one season, which was the right move, I feel.
Now that we’ve reached the end of this article, let’s never ever ever speak of this again. Instead, go binge the ONLY REAL Kath & Kim on Netflix, ploise.
Matty Galea is the Entertainment Editor at Pedestrian who also dabbles in woo-woo stuff like astrology and crystals and has been penning horoscopes since the start of his career. He also Tweets about pop culture and astrology and posts spicy content on Instagram.
The post Remember When The Americans Thought They Could Do Kath & Kim Better Than Us? appeared first on Pedestrian TV.
