This week, the release date was announced. People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan will hit cinemas in August. The film is a spin-off of a TV show which is quintessentially British in a distinctly subcultural way. Set in Brentford, West London, the show features slang, references and storylines which could only come from the UK. To the uninitiated, it is as confusing as its poorly guessed-at Netflix subtitles.
That it made its way onto Netflix is remarkable in itself. The grassroots mockumentary started life as a series of shorts on YouTube. The cast - such as Allan “Seapa” Mustafa who plays MC Grindah - simply cannot be divorced from the characters they play. But despite a huge lack of experience, a group of friends who used to run a pirate radio station decided that their collective history, jokes and caricatures would be ripe for parody and slowly created a set of webisodes, a pilot and, eventually, a Bafta-winning TV series.
But how could this show possibly translate in America? Well, conjuring a party planning collective called “Whet Desert”, Amazon Studios has attempted a US remake. The similarities are instantly recognisable, with characters Beats and Decoy flanking a larger-than-life character who, in this case, is a DJ called Coyote.
It seems every character is based on one from People Just Do Nothing (henceforth referred to as PJDN). Equivalents for Miche, Angel and Craig can also be identified in the two available clips. According to reports on the show, Chabuddy G is now Farouk and Steves is now Brody though neither really appear in the clips. With potentially less presence from a “Steves” character, Beats has far more of an interest in drug-taking in this version.
A huge aspect of PJDN is the transmedia storytelling - that these characters exist on the screen, on Spotify, on social media and at music gigs - in real life. The remake has tried to mimic this, on social media at least. The hashtag #whetdesert will bring up a few posts which curiously include a Whet Desert logo which appears to have been superseded by another logo and also a profile for Brody. However, while he is wearing a very Steves-appropriate hat with ear-warmers, this actor was also superseded by another actor who actually looks less like Steves. Truth be told, it’s a bit of a mess.
But perhaps it makes sense that an American version was attempted. The show’s executive producer, Ash Atalla, also directed The Office and though it may anger diehard fans of the original, The US Office was more commercially successful. The script is pretty much the same at least for the first couple of seasons, making for an interesting example of what might be dubbed very British humour actually working well with a US audience. Furthermore, Ash Atalla owns Roughcut TV - the production company which filmed both PJDN and the US remake.
The original PJDN does a number of things incredibly well. Where before the small screen had been plagued with the misinformation and hyperbole of soaps and dramas, drug taking in PJDN is somehow faithfully recreated yet equally humorous. With the cast not having come from an acting background, the show is an antidote to many of the tropes and misrepresentations we see on TV. In fact, when they film a music video in season four, many of the jokes - such as codes being assigned to types of toilet breaks and Chabuddy G shouting the word “travelling” when walking with a camera - were inspired by the entirely new experience of filming with a TV crew. Indeed, what makes PJDN feel so organic and genuine is the fact that they are friends messing around together (as Seapa highlighted in one of their post-Bafta interviews).
The show’s writer, Steve Stamp aka Steves, was going out with Lily Brazier aka Miche when they started filming the series. This shows just how involved they are in each other’s lives and that the vibe they brought mattered far more than the experience they did or didn’t have.
I remember the first time I heard the word “bare” (i.e. lots of) on TV. I was watching the 2006 Noel Clarke film Kidulthood. One can’t help but relate to characters using the same slang as you and though it was something of a shock, it wasn’t as jarring as when a suited man says “safe as fuck” in the 1999 counterculture classic Human Traffic.
Like these films, PJDN employs specific themes, language and music, creating a distinctly British feel. Inevitably, all of this is lost in the American remake. That said, there are some very close similarities such as characters throwing hand signs or the recreated “heaven” photo of Grindah and Miche (or Coyote and Krystal). However, these similarities make it seem as if the original has been plagiarised.
On the other hand, there are distinct differences too. Decoy speaks more in the two clips than he did in the whole of PJDN and is also a woman, meaning the dynamic of Angel’s dubious parentage and the odd tension between Miche and Decoy isn’t included. Perhaps more importantly, in the original, the cast’s love of music really shines through. However, Whet Desert DJ “trap house” which seems more of a play on words than an actual genre. Clearly, these differences are equally annoying, like the show’s creators have attempted to alter or improve the original. In this sense, they can’t win. But it’s worth noting that they were attempting to bring the show to a new audience rather than win over existing fans.
Perhaps this is where the true problem lies. In the UK, we don’t tend to remake US TV shows. We just watch them. But to market anything in the US, it helps if it is Americanised. For instance, when they filmed Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, they went to great lengths to make all the houses on Harry’s street look identical not because that’s how residential streets look in the UK but because it would be more familiar for an American audience.
Honestly, if I try and look at these clips objectively, they’re not bad. If I had never seen PJDN, I might even be tempted to watch it. The characters do appear to have a degree of depth and, promoting the idea that they are purportedly big fish in a small pond, the cultural and actual wasteland of North Las Vegas is a fitting backdrop.
But because I know what it’s based on, something about it doesn’t feel right. It is the same sense you get if you really enjoyed Peep Show then watch one of the two US pilots or if you really enjoyed The Inbetweeners then subject yourself to the American version.
Even before I knew the attempted PJDN remake existed, I would have told you with certainty that I was looking forward to seeing the film People Just Do Nothing: Big In Japan way more than any kind of US remake of the show (though it would be equally interesting to see the cast play other characters).
It seems the US remake never got far enough to get given a name and, ultimately, it’s sad that a group of largely unknown actors were almost in an Amazon TV show. Nothing has been gained from the show being axed, but maybe Kurupt FM fans can sleep a little easier.
Many thanks to YouTuber Andrew whose investigations formed the basis of this article
Kommentare