I can only assume that there’s a serious mad-on between MTV and the United Kingdom because they cannot seem to stop ruining edgy/funny British television series.  Other networks have adapted British television hits, with varying degrees of success.

For instance, NBC’s 2003 version of “Coupling,” which failed; and 2005’s “The Office,” which is still on the air.

When I heard that MTV had adopted E4’s (a British television network) “Skins,” I wasn’t too optimistic that it would be as engaging as the original series.

It appears that I was right, because it lasted only a single 10-episode season.

Here’s a trailer for MTV’s version…

and the British original.

I was hoping that the cancellation of the “Skins” remake would have dissuaded executives at MTV from venturing across the ocean for inspiration.

I was wrong.  MTV soon afterward decided to remake “The Inbetweeners,” a raunchy series about, essentially, a bunch of Secondary School kids on a seemingly perpetual quest to get laid.  The series is actually more complex than that, though that’s a thread that runs though a lot that the characters do.

What made the original series work for me was probably the very same reason that it was remade.  I am unfamiliar with the British system, and the contrasts between their system, with the one I am familiar with, interested me.

In other words, the differences are what made the show so intriguing.  I liked the accents, and that the people are truly ‘foreign,’ in the sense that they are culturally and geographically distant, and different, from what I am familiar with.

An American version of the same show is by default much less interesting because it’s not showing me anything that I haven’t either directly experienced or am very familiar with already.

Here’s the trailer for the MTV version of “The Inbetweeners”…

and the first episode of the British original series.