An Australian version of The Office. A German version of Ghosts. An American version of Mitchell & Webb-starring comedy Back… another day, another announcement of a sitcom international remake. With scripted comedy’s backs currently against the wall and UK TV commissioning at a low, remakes with their built-in audience recognition and ready-made publicity, make safer bets than risky originals.
The latest, as reported by Deadline, is a British version of NBC comedy Cheers, the Boston bar-set sitcom that ran from 1982 – 1993. Big Talk Pictures has lined up Men Behaving Badly creator Simon Nye to adapt the premise for a UK setting. (If he’s going for realism and not planning a period piece, Nye had better hustle because despite our undeniable appetite for booze, the UK pub industry is not thriving. Over 50 pubs a month closed in the first half of 2024 alone.)
In short: why bother. If it’s a British version of Cheers you’re after, then one already exists in the form of Craig Cash and Phil Mealey’s excellent comedy Early Doors. No, it didn’t run for over a decade and make household names of its barfly characters, but it deserved to, and has all the wit, wisdom, laughs and melancholy of Glen and Les Charles’ Cheers. Plus: it stars a very fresh-faced James McAvoy.
Set entirely inside Stockport pub The Grapes, Early Doors is a half-hour Northern comedy that’s a spiritual successor to The Royle Family. It’s more than a spiritual successor in fact, because it was written by The Royle Family’s co-creator Craig Cash and writer Phil Mealey. Imagine what goes on when Jim and Dave from that show leave the Royle house for one of their regular visits to The Feathers, and that’s Early Doors.