10 Best American Adaptations of British TV Dramas
American adaptations of British TV shows tend to be comedies (The Office, Veep), game shows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Weakest Link) or reality competitions (American Idol, Dancing with the Stars), but sometimes we Yanks take a crack at dramas from across the pond, too. Take, for instance, Parish, the new AMC drama starring Giancarlo Esposito, which is an adaptation of BBC One’s The Driver.
Of the British TV dramas that begat American re-dos, our 10 favorites range from frothy soaps to gripping thrillers.
Mistresses
A few years after the BBC One drama of the same name ended, the American Mistresses started its four-season run of soapy summertime fun on ABC. Alyssa Milano, Yunjin Kim, Rochelle Aytes, and Jes Macallan continued the fine TV tradition of fashionable, flirtatious female foursomes.
Gracepoint
Though this Fox remake didn’t have the longevity or the acclaim of its forerunner, the ITV drama Broadchurch, it did benefit from having the same creator (Chris Chibnall) and co-lead (David Tennant). Anna Gunn stepped in for Olivia Colman in the tense story of a coastal town undone by the murder of a young boy.
Life on Mars
In both this ABC police procedural and its BBC One predecessor, a cop mysteriously time-travels from the 2000s to the 1970s after a car accident. The American version, though, ended its one-season run with a gonzo twist: Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) and his 1970s-era colleagues are actually astronauts on a future mission to Mars.
Prime Suspect
Helen Mirren got seven seasons of playing DCI Jane Tennison in ITV’s Prime Suspect; Maria Bello got just 13 episodes playing Det. Jane Timoney on NBC’s Prime Suspect. But Bello commanded the screen during that short run — as Jane, armed with one-liners and fedoras aplenty, held her own in a sexist NYPD boy’s club.
Mad Dogs
After creating the psychological thriller Mad Dogs for Sky One, screenwriter Cris Cole brought the story to Prime Video with the help of producer Shawn Ryan (The Shield). The series starred Ben Chaplin, Michael Imperioli, Romany Malco, and Steve Zahn as forty-somethings whose chaotic tropical getaway makes other midlife crises look manageable in comparison.
Being Human
Being Human is easier said than done when you’re a ghost, a vampire, or a werewolf, as the characters of both the BBC Three drama and its Syfy remake could attest. In the American version, Meaghan Rath, Sam Witwer, and Sam Huntington played supernatural creatures trying to understand their alter-egos — and hide them from the rest of the world.
Touching Evil
Taking over for Robson Green and Nicola Walker of the ITV’s Touching Evil, Jeffrey Donovan and Vera Farmiga led the cast of this short-lived USA remake, a moody crime drama following a detective who gains useful mental abilities after a near-fatal shooting. Bruno Heller wrote the pilot before crafting a similar dynamic in the police procedural The Mentalist.
Shameless
After creating the British Touching Evil, screenwriter Paul Abbott created the British Shameless, which also got an American version. That remake — a comedy-drama, to be sure — starred William H. Macy as an alcoholic deadbeat of a father and Emmy Rossum and a still-on-the-rise Jeremy Allen White as two of his kids.
Queer as Folk
Not even two years after the British Queer as Folk got under way — with Aiden Gillen and Charlie Hunnam on the roster — Showtime followed suit with its own take. The show provided vital LGBTQ representation at a time when there was precious little on American TV, and a Peacock reimagining followed two decades later.
House of Cards
Putting aside the scandal dogging one of its stars, the American House of Cards wasn’t just at the vanguard of streaming television (as the first TV series made for Netflix), it was also a thrilling drama about merciless political ambition. The BBC original, which predated the American series by more than two decades, also wowed critics (and also broke the fourth wall).