10 US Remakes Of British TV Shows Which Were Actually Pretty Good
6. All In The Family
Another of the great Norman Lear’s incredibly successful sitcoms, this time based on the BBC’s Till Death Us Do Part. Lear bought the rights to the classic British comedy after connecting with its inter-generational culture class themes, gutted it, and built one of the USA’s most acclaimed shows ever to air.
Like Till Death Us Do Part, All In The Family is centred on a hotheaded, reactionary patriarch of a working class family. Archie Bunker, the US’s Alf Garnett, was depicted as more of a fundamentally decent man than his hard edged UK inspiration, but was similarly impressively detailed for a comedy creation, struggling to keep up with a world he no longer understood.
Lear was unafraid to tackle controversial topics like race, religion, and the gaping political divide of the 1970s, and in Archie Bunker (iconically depicted by Carroll O’Connor) he had the perfect foil to expose some of America’s worst impulses. That the bigoted Bunker became a huge fan favourite should perhaps not seem such a surprise given how events have unfolded in recent years.
The sitcom was a behemoth, spawning seven spin offs or sequels, and remaining a cultural touchstone to this day.