American remakes: watch this space

With Harvey Keitel bringing his bad lieutenant to Life on Mars, Andrew Eaton can forgive the US its past televisual transgressions, as long as it sticks to bravura casting

THERE is something faintly ridiculous about America's insular habit of remaking foreign films and TV programmes, especially when – like Life on Mars, the US version of which has just started on ABC – they were in English in the first place so they don't even need subtitles.

Some adaptations, at least, raise the game and the budget – Traffic, for example. But what, exactly, was the point of making a US version of The Office, when the result is more or less the same as the original? And whose bright idea was it to Americanise Kath and Kim, the very point of which is how uniquely Australian it is? Most peculiarly, why on earth would anyone want to make an American version of Coupling, when Coupling was, essentially, a shameless British rip-off of Friends? I think we sold you a pup with that one, America.

Very occasionally, though, an American remake comes along with an idea so ingenious that none of this seems to matter. I am talking, of course, about the decision to cast Harvey Keitel as Detective Gene Hunt in the US Life on Mars. Keitel's performance – channelling Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, as suggested by the new show's 1973 setting, and Bad Lieutenant, as suggested by the character he's playing – is exactly as OTT as the part requires, which may help explain why the show mostly had rave reviews on its debut last week.

So all is forgiven America, for now, just as long as you consider remaking the following British TV classics too, with similarly bravura casting decisions…

1 SPACED

With Simon Pegg's profile rising in Hollywood, everyone wants to see the British comedy series that made his name – in an American version, obviously. So Fox has developed one, without asking for the input of Pegg and Jessica Hynes, who wrote the original. The pilot episode, by all accounts, has not been well received.

Never mind, though. With the right cast it could still work! We vote for Hayden Christensen as Tim, Pegg's sci-fi obsessed stoner (with much self-referential humour as Tim rages against the uselessness of the Star Wars prequels in which Christensen once starred). Sarah Silverman is his flatmate Daisy, always getting into scrapes with her inappropriate comments. Joan Rivers is Marsha, the loopy landlady who has a hopeless crush on her eccentric artist tenant, Brian (Robert Downey Jr). But stealing every scene, as ever, is Philip Seymour Hoffman as Mike, Tim's gun-obsessed best friend (a joke that'll be even funnier in America!). Paris Hilton pops in from time to time as Daisy's ditzy pal Twist, but hopefully not too often.

2 'ALLO 'ALLO

Danny DeVito and Susan Sarandon star as René and Edith, cafe owners caught between the Resistance and the Nazis in something resembling war-torn Paris. Cate Blanchett channels Charlotte Gray as Yvette "I vill say this only vance" Carte-Blanche. A highlight is Ben Affleck as Crabtree, an ineffectual English – sorry, American – agent, whose attempts at a French accent are even less convincing than the cast of Charlotte Gray.

3 THE MIGHTY BOOSH.

It's the wackiest, most surreal thing ever on American TV! Not the cult British TV show, but the US remake, starring Johnny Depp as Howard TJ Moon, the genre-spanning jazz man and cream poet. Russell Brand, in a breakthrough American role which he landed after sleeping with… sorry, we mean doing some skilful networking, plays Vince Noir, Moon's back-combed, cheeky fringed space cadet friend/nemesis. Look out, too, for Al Pacino as Bollo the Gorilla. Hoo hah!

4 ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES

In which Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Michael Cera (Superbad/Juno) introduce a American audiences to the immortal phrase "Rodney, you plonker!", while trundling around the streets of Chicago in an old Robin Reliant. Robert De Niro stars as Uncle Albert, boring everybody to tears with his stories about motherf***ing Nam, with Brad Pitt popping up as Boycie.

Also coming up: Taggart, starring Tom Hanks as the grumpy detective; Fawlty Towers, featuring a career-changing performance by a balding, moustached Tom Cruise; and Last of the Summer Wine, with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci careering down a hill in Maine in a motherf***ing wheelbarrow.