Look it me, Kimmy, look at me!

Oh. lol Watching channel nine news they mentioned how some reviews of the American (mis)translation of Kath & Kim was so bad that they should cut off trade with Australia. Hopefully they were just being sarcastic and overly snarky but do grow up. I doubted it would ever be a hit or strike the right note in the US that it did in the UK. The UK gets the humour because they are familiar with Australian soaps and probably have a similar sense of humour. And when you call it tacky....DUH STUPID. It's taking the piss out of people who think they are superior but actually look ridiculous. And there's a lot of people like that.

My first reaction when finding out the show was getting a US version was "Bwuhhhh?" It's a satire of Australian suburban life. It's meant to be tacky, over-the-top and pretentiously low class. Then I saw a preview and it had Selma Blair playing Kimmy. Bwuhhhh? Kimmy is not meant to be attractive. That's half of the joke. She's meant to be slightly overweight, convinced she is beautiful, thus when she wears a g-string with tight, hipster pants it's twice as bad as a beautiful girl committing the same fashion faux pas. She's not meant to look good in a g-string and Selma Blair is beautiful. If she played a tacky character it would seem more like she lacked class ala Paris Hilton, which is very different to Kimmy on the Australian version.

I know the US TV studios are running out of ideas since they've already done a US version of Ugly Betty and NZ's Outrageous Fortune is also in the making (and probably others that I don't know about). But how did they think this show would ever translate when it's so culturally dependant? When I first heard about it I thought the only way it would work is if the writers looked at their own society and made it markedly different from the original.

But the cast is so pretty that I don't think they got the concept at all. It's funny because they had it on the news here that the show was slammed almost universally over there. And even the newscaster looked amused. Heh.