We've just started getting this on a Canadian television channel.
No.1 and I are great (US) L&O fans -- the original; CI with psycho-boy for fun; not so much SVU with whiney-boy but it still beats trash like CSI. Canadians in general watch L&O in higher proportions than Americans themselves do. Smart TV. ;)
Had great hopes for L&O UK. What a disappointment to find that the two episodes we have now seen are pretty much word-for-word the same scripts as the US original.
(I have a parlour trick. Show me the first 15 seconds of any of the original US series, at least the first several years' worth, and I'll give you the capsule plot, but always so as not to give it away. The kid rappelling up the building late at night, for instance, is "Boom!")
The first one we saw was the baby who died because the block-busting slum landlord wouldn't let the babysitter into the building and carbon monoxide had built up, I think it was -- in the US version the baby froze to death. The second one was about a foster kid killed by another foster kid, whose defence counsel argued he had defective genes. Defence counsel was Assumpta from Ballykissangel. I think that's going to be the recurring role of the defence lawyer named Danielle in the US version.
It's fun that it's got Danny Baldwin from Corrie in it and all. We get quite fond of various UK actors and like seeing them in new stuff.
But if it's gonna be rehashed plots we've seen 10 times each already ... hm. Like when a US network made a Cracker series starring Eldon from the Murphy Brown sitcom. Sounded good ... but it was word for word the UK Cracker. Seen it, twice, don't need to see a remake.
So, any thoughts about the UK version of L&O?
It feels like we've come in at the second season. (The series is supposed to start out with Harvey Beagle, brother-in-law / lawyer to the Masucci crime family, L&O's own private Mafia gang, later replaced by the Mahoneys, doing something on the steps of the courthouse.)
We'll likely keep watching it anyway just because we like "foreign" TV. ;) Curious how it has gone over at home, though.
I'm off home for supper and bed, will check back after noon your time.
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