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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spells &amp; Karma" data-source="post: 442634" data-attributes="member: 23">As of last night, I've now watched no less than three versions of the opening episode of Ghosts: the British original, the American adaption and the new Australian adaption.The British version was really good, evoking children's sitcoms of the Seventies and Eighties (most notably The Ghosts Of Motley Hall but also with a touch of Rentaghost). The characters were painted with broad strokes, and I occasionally struggled with the 21st Century speech cadence (which naturally leans into Americanism fairly regularly) but there was also a heart that added substance.I watched the American adaption's opening episode some years ago (I forget when). A while back I commented this:It still holds true. I only have to think of Rose McIver's vacant eyes and fixed grin and I can't even face giving it another go.Someone suggested looking at the Australian version last night and I went in with an open mind. I like Aussie TV in general, and I feel the sensibilities are closer to British than American tastes, with a preference for grit over gross and an aversion to saccharine. Also, I was curious to see if any familiar faces would crop up, though  I suspected (correctly) the chances would be slim with this being a younger cast.I'll say this for the Aussie version: it feels they've made it their own. Rather than the American method of using younger, more photogenic actors to play analogous ghosts to those played by the British character actors, the Australians go rebelliously off-script by having characters who have some similarities, but  are less immediately identifiable. The "human" heirs are pretty clear, as is the Irish maid. But there are some big changes, such as the female ghost in Eighties workout gear. Is the  ghost with the freezing breath supposed to be Lady Button, or has that now gone to one of the men? I don't know. One character, I noticed towards episode's end, wore no trousers, which was evidently a nod to the Julian Fawcett character, but everything else about him was different.Because of this, it does lose some simplicity - the cartoony immediate recognition of each ghost made the British and American versions very accessible - but this is offset by each ghost now having a unique "power" which is something new (unless it's come from later episodes of the American adaption). I like that  they've put their own stamp on this so it feels slightly less "obvious" as a remake, but I still feel - albeit only based on this one episode - that the Aussie adaption is inferior to the British one. And I still don't entirely see the point of contemporaneously remaking a series that already exists in more or less the same language. Is British English really that difficult to understand to non-Europeans?</blockquote>

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