[LaDeDa]

What hit shows from abroad that never took off here having the desired impact can you add to the list?

Pushing daisies ... the USA comedy drama.
Itv got the rights and advertised it so much, giving it a primetime Saturday night slot but it never got people interested and ratings kept low throughout its run.

Survivor ... Itv got the rights had big advertising campaign even flame hearts on break bumpers but had wrong host a news reader and wasn't entertaining just bore throughout. Itv had the 8pm slot on Tue and Thur for the interview with the eliminated contestants but it soon moved the show after the news as ratings flopped. 

Remember a second survivor series on itv that was more compact and on less nights in the week but again failed to gain interest.

BBC doing a reboot in 2023 of survivor after paying for the rights to the show but without the nightly I'm a celebrity feel of a reality show fun factor can't see it taking off as lacks entertainment value and will become forgettable too serious. 

So you think you can dance.. BBC got the rights and think it lasted two series but BBC messing about time slots for second series to fit in sports in primetime hurt it's ratings badly. 
Surprised no other network tried a reboot as was such a big hit in USA back then .

Can anyone add shows to the list that had big potential as big hits abroad but just didn't take off here?
Entertainment, comedy, dramas ?

[nwtv2003]

In terms of sitcom, I’d say the biggest one that was never huge in the UK was Seinfeld. Yes the BBC showed the entirety of the series, and it has been repeated on other channels since, but it’s only ever had a niche following here. Whereas other sitcoms from that era, notably Friends were just as big here.

I do believe that the BBC’s scheduling of Seinfeld did play some part in the show’s failure to make it big, as it were.

[James2001]

I find it interesting that some of the most popular shows from the US were never shown here at all, as far as I'm aware. Leave It To Beaver is one, a show that's still popular in the US now, and never shown here.

Gilligan's Island's an example of a show that was (and still is) huge in the US, but wasn't here- from what I'm aware, only Granada ever showed it in its entirety, other ITV regions only showed a few episodes, if at all, and I don't think it's been seen here since the 60s.

The Mary Tyler Moore show is also an interesting one- again, huge in the US, but BBC1, various ITV regions AND Channel 4 all tried to show it, but I don't think any got to the end of the second season. Whereas the spin-offs Rhoda and Lou Grant actually were popular here- really interesting how a show didn't take off here, but its two spin-offs did.

Can think of plenty of other examples of US sitcoms that were big there, but only had a few episodes or weren't shown at all here. Still happens sometimes, even in the multi-channel world. I don't think the Roseanne spin-off The Conners has been shown over here for example, even though the original Roseanne was a reliable hit for years (admittedly, I doubt the short lived revival series of Roseanne will ever be shown here, and the situation there might be something to do with why The Conners hasn't been shown).

[VMPhil]

LWT attempted to show The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, but it was a ratings flop. Carson was upset at this failure and sometimes mentioned it if a British guest came on.

[James2001]

Not really suprising it didn't catch on really, while you got some high profile guests, many of them were people who I doubt many British people would have been familiar with. Would be like putting one of our shows full of soap stars and reality TV people on in the US.

It's actually quite interesting how comparatively little Johnny Carson actually did, most of the time when he was doing the show, he only presented 3 out of 5 days a week, with a "guest host" one other day and a repeat the other, and he took probably around 3-4 months a year off entirely, also filled by guest hosts and repeats. So probably only around half of the episodes each year were actually both new and presented by him. His successors haven't had as much time off!

[XIII]

It's more of a format than an import but Jeopardy! has never really succeeded either in the UK or internationally. Shows like Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud/Fortunes, The Price is Right were much more successful.

[Neil Jones]

It's more of a format than an import but Jeopardy! has never really succeeded either in the UK or internationally. Shows like Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud/Fortunes, The Price is Right were much more successful.

Jeopardy! came at the wrong time over here, if it had come ten/fifteen years later it may have been more successful.
Because of the prize-show limits we had at the time, the whole concept of the game was changed. For the worse.

For some shows it makes no difference and the reformatting worked (Wheel of Fortune for example). The original Price is Right series saw the IBA intervene because something about it wasn't skillful enough, so production had to butcher it some more.

Re: late night US talk shows - we had The Nightly Show. Which lasted six weeks, tanked in the ratings and then rolled over and died and was never seen or heard from again. Channel 5 had The Jack Docherty Show when it first launched which was closer to the US format, but they gradually stripped it back, it became weekly and then it was dropped altogether when the ratings tanked.

We've just never really got behind them. The closest and most successful "version" of them is probably the likes of the Graham Norton show. But that's not even a late night talkshow as such you see in the US, it's probably closer to an ad-hoc panel/comedy show with a bit of talking. And we all know America never quite "got" panel shows on their own, they had to be wrapped around some other format, typically gameshow even if it doesn't quite fit (Whose Line being the obvious example here).

[Nini]

Pushing daisies ... the USA comedy drama.
Itv got the rights and advertised it so much, giving it a primetime Saturday night slot but it never got people interested and ratings kept low throughout its run.

Somewhat, iirc for the second season some episodes aired first in the UK on ITV2 so it's not like it was a hit in the US either.

[Johnr]

The Mole sadly ended up on Channel 5, still hugely successful in Belgium and The Netherlands

Surprised the BBC or ITV have never given it a go especially when you consider original host Glenn Hugill now has his own production company making many shows for them! It doesn’t even need to have the ridiculously large prize money Channel 5 had on offer really

Netflix have ‘rebooted’ the USA version although based on the trailer it looks aimed towards ‘Gen Z’ sadly

[Transmission]

I find it interesting that some of the most popular shows from the US were never shown here at all, as far as I'm aware. Leave It To Beaver is one, a show that's still popular in the US now, and never shown here.

Gilligan's Island's an example of a show that was (and still is) huge in the US, but wasn't here- from what I'm aware, only Granada ever showed it in its entirety, other ITV regions only showed a few episodes, if at all, and I don't think it's been seen here since the 60s.

Yeah, those two and particularly Gilliagan's Island are often mentioned in US TV and film and the reference goes over most peoples' heads here.

Another is Family Matters which is think was shown on Sky One but with little impact. Even now you still often hear Urkel mentioned all the time in American shows, pretty much nobody here would know who he is.