LITTLE BRITAIN USA [2009]

"Britain and America:

It's always been us against the world.
If there's a country to be invaded

or a war to be waged, we do it together.

So what if the rest of the world hates us.

...they're all foreign anyway."

Every now and then a television comedy sketch show gets it right, like early incarnations of Saturday Night Live, SCTV, In Living Color, The Kids In The Hall and now British funny guys Matt Lucas & David Walliams' Little Britain.  It was a refreshingly funny and often crude look at British society, politics, commercialism, sports and everyday life, both rich & poor and young & old, all stitched together with Doctor Who's Tom Baker giving a satirical no-nonsense commentary like it were a documentary.   After three years of doing this, HBO asked Lucas & Walliams to bring it over to America and give it a good ol' Yankee spin, leaving fans wondering just what the hell they were going to do with it.

What's great about this version is it's not simply just American satire copying the British series but it's a comparison of the two nations and how similar they are in self-superiority and unwillingness to listen to anybody else.  Several characters are brought over from the British series and placed into an American setting making for some hilarious situations they couldn't otherwise explore in their home country.   A host of new American characters are brought into the mix, taking jabs at obesity, homosexuals in denial, the need to cling to the American "dream", washed-up celebrities and children exposed to a filthy-mouthed culture. 

The series doesn't always work as it could have done with a larger variety of characters and themes to explore and take a swipe at.  They're always funny but with only 6 episodes in the series, you'd think they would try to broaden the cast of characters a bit more instead of repeating themselves as much as they do.  Apparently America didn't think it was as funny laughing at themselves as it was laughing at the Brits and the series was swiftly cancelled without so much as a shriek.  It's a shame because the possibilities were endless but since the first series already started to repeat itself, I don't know if they would ever explore any further.  

6 episodes.  Roughly 30 minutes each.

Buyer's Guide:

Available in DVD box sets and on iTunes, Netflix and Amazon.

3 gun erections out of 5