TMC
04-17-2025, 04:35 AM
https://jacksonupperco.com/2025/04/16/short-lived-sitcom-potpourri-pop-out-kath-kim/
Thoughts: Like The Office, this adaptation of a foreign sitcom also met with bad reviews from critics who compared it unfavorably to the original, setting it up for failure with viewers both aware and unaware of its predecessor. However, unlike The Office, Kath & Kim (https://web.archive.org/web/20140406112618/http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/topic/3178061-kath-kim-us-nbc-gives-up/?view=getnewpost) was never able to tweak itself to American tastes or cultivate the kind of quality that could then prove its early doubters wrong. I think there’s a foundational reason – although it first seems to be just a low-concept buddy comedy about a wacky mother and daughter, the Aussie original had a sense of social satire via its understood lampoon of a specific type of people: the expanding group of suburbanites who had risen to achieve money but still lacked class. That idea is lost in translation with U.S. audiences, for whom money and class are more synonymous and thus only spoofable when contorted via bigger juxtapositions (with more specific incongruities).
Thoughts: Like The Office, this adaptation of a foreign sitcom also met with bad reviews from critics who compared it unfavorably to the original, setting it up for failure with viewers both aware and unaware of its predecessor. However, unlike The Office, Kath & Kim (https://web.archive.org/web/20140406112618/http://forums.televisionwithoutpity.com/topic/3178061-kath-kim-us-nbc-gives-up/?view=getnewpost) was never able to tweak itself to American tastes or cultivate the kind of quality that could then prove its early doubters wrong. I think there’s a foundational reason – although it first seems to be just a low-concept buddy comedy about a wacky mother and daughter, the Aussie original had a sense of social satire via its understood lampoon of a specific type of people: the expanding group of suburbanites who had risen to achieve money but still lacked class. That idea is lost in translation with U.S. audiences, for whom money and class are more synonymous and thus only spoofable when contorted via bigger juxtapositions (with more specific incongruities).