Didn't NBC pass on the US "The IT crowd?" Another show that can't be duplicated.....

after that I went and finally tracked down the original: 8 hours later I'm almost done with first series.

and yes, American pilot is almost frame-by-frame remake of original, but all if this thing fails/gets canceled after 5 episodes, at least it gave me that final push to go after UK version, which I'm loving quite a bit.

Both of them sensibly said no but imagine how surreal it would have been to seem them in a US pilot version of their show. Especially if the command from up high was to play it "American".

don't get me wrong, the show itself most probably will be better then alias, but alias pilot kicked all kinds of ass, and I don't know a single person that watched it and didn't want to see next episode.

fringe, on the other hand, sets a cool premise and all, but characters are kind of bleak. pacey sucks by default and girl is trying to channel sydney bristow a wee bit too hard. the only bright spots seem to be john noble and charlotte rampling, but their characters will be more of a support once the series gets going.

and I must say how much I lol'd when, in first 5 minutes of the pilot, you have a character that declares his love for the female lead. he might have as well said "gee, I hope nothing bad happens to me soon...".

true blood pilot seems all over the place. in a good way.

we may not get next 6 feet under, but we might be getting new carnivàle/JFC instead.

I really wish pilot was a 2 episodes long. scene 29 missing or not.

There are a number of episodes where Gene & Sam get to the place via totally different methods, or Sam spends the entire episode proving Gene right for reasons Gene doesn't care about.

The Point, was obviously the differing police styles. The smoking, women differences were there, but they weren't the main point.

I assume the US version will suffer from the lack of clearly contrasting styles of policing. In the UK version they spend a lot of time showing you how utterly frustrating policing in the UK has become. It is a place where they would rather let people die than inconvenience a suspect. Sam keenly feels this in the pilot. This is 180* from the Gene Hunt style of policing in which Gene would rather beat something out of someone than risk an upstanding citizen's life.

US policing (see The Wire) has not gotten so anti-septic and PC that there is a sharp and unmistakable contrast in styles. To get that you'd have to go back to the 40s/50s police, before the 60's "quesiton authority" era.

And then the contrast wouldn't be between anti-septic, ineffective, PC police versus down-n-dirty, mostly effective, chauvinistic police (the UK contrast), but between bureaucratic, politicized, tech-reliant police versus society respected, LA Confidential-style police. Even then it isn't as good a contrast.

If there was any moral political message in the UK Life on Mars it was that, as photoboy says, both Sam & Gene's styles had major flaws and both halves were needed to make a full "good cop". But, Life on Mars wasn't about politics. It was entertainment. And the dramatic tension was created by the difference in those styles.

some other potential characters would include noah bennet, jack bauer, ben linus and everyone in the wire and deadwood.