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How does this compare to 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'?

posted 18 years ago by highlandland
2 replies | jump to latest

Hi,

I live in the UK and was recently reading an article about 'Not the Nine O'Clock News' which said that 'NNTN' was a US version of it. After Googling for it, I was quite surprised that the show seems to have been a hit, as a lot of UK-to-US translations ('Fawlty Towers' being the obvious one) have failed, sometimes several times over.

I just wanted to know, how this compares to 'Not the Nine O'Clock News'? Has anyone on this board seen both shows? How do they compare?

Rich Hall, incidentally, is hugely popular in the UK, with regular shows at the Edinburgh Festival, a best-selling comedy music CD (as Otis Lee Crenshaw), regular appearances on TV panel game shows, and at least two weekly newspaper columns.

John

[–] 18 years ago

[deleted]

[–] locnar1975 14 years ago

I know i'm responding to a 4 year old post, but here goes.......

Fortuntaely I'm in Canada, so we always got both US and UK versions of shows. The two were VERY similar. Both ran skits, mock news reports, and made fun of politicians (both left and right wing). The only difference (obviously) was that NNTN was more focused on US news, and Not the 9 O'Clock was UK.

Because NNTN was on HBO, not a network, they got away with more biting political satire, hense why it was closer to the UK version.

Poltical satire was more undergound in the US at the time. NNTN started to bring it more mainstream. IMHO if it wasnt for NNTN breaking the ground, you wouldn't have The Daily Show or Colbert Report.