Rip off BBC1's Accident from 1978
This programme is a direct rip off a BBC 1 series from 1978 called Accident. Have a look on IMDB. ITV, shame on you!
shareNo it was a rip off of "Five Days". Same show different cast
share
MovieChat Forums > Collision (2009) Discussion > Rip off BBC1's Accident from 1978
Or maybe it was a ripoff of the U.S. TV movie "Smashup on Interstate 5" (1976). Either way it's an old idea, and with nothing original or new added to make it noteworthy.
shareI wasn't born in 1978, so it gets away with it in my book. I loved it.
shareI live in the States, have not seen any of the shows you have referred to, but am absolutely loving this one. I had no intention of watching it, but I could not turn it off or look away on Sunday night.
Whenever you look up, there I shall be -- and whenever I look up there will be you.
American here, I remember Smashup and thought about it when I heard of and watched this, but Smashup, from the seventies, simply followed the predictable american pattern of soap opera lives, once the accident happened it was just an Oops approach to it, no one was solving how it took place.
The difference might be Smashup was based on a true story. I remember it had a couple who were being chased by the police. They killed a cop (or the guy killed the cop) whose wife had just had a baby, so they were wanted for murder as well.
Poetic justice, they were both killed, the cop-killer and his girlfriend-accomplice, in the wreck.
Buddy Ebsen and Harriet Nelson were the token old couple (wasn't it Harriet Nelson, or was it Ida Lupino?) and she was dying. He was driving the car, she whinced from the pain of her illness, he reached over to her and that is what caused him to swerve and set the events into motion.
He was killed in the accident. I remember thinking, well, that solves his being left alone after she dies.
Had a bit with a guy on a motorcycle being flung over a car when he hit it too, I recall.
But Collision, as most English programs do, had a mystery behind it.
There is also the comedy, Great American Traffic Jam, listed here on IMDB as Gridlock.
I don't understand the loyalty to Accident, from over thirty years ago. Generally this seems to be the timeframe of 'remakes' not ripoffs.
Poseidon Adventure, Stepford Wives, Land of the Lost, and endless others are all reaching thirty or so years of age and being remade.
The remake of Jimmy Stewart's It's A Wonderful Life was It Happened One Christmas with Marlo Thomas, and it was just over thirty years.
Some are in a shorter time span, such as My Man Godfrey with David Niven, being made just over twenty years after the Powell-Lombard version.
Or you have Hitchcock remaking Man Who Knew Too Much.
No idea why Sharon Stone's Gloria was remade ninteen years after Gena Rowland's version.
And there was ownership and approach shenanigans involved in the two Hulk movies, the second opting to be part of the entire Avengers franchise, while the first one seemed to merely want to relaunch the Bixby-Ferrigno popularity (again, right at thirty years since the show aired).
Even still, I havent seen Accident, but reading the description alone, I couldn't help but note it is described the same way the tivo describes Collision, which I thought was odd. Both shows are described as involving ten people. I don't understand why Tsugga or Richard's chauffer are excluded from that count, or the officers are included.
Again, havent seen Accident, but I see Doremy Vernon is listed as appearing in seven of eight episodes (Collision, by the way, was shown in America as a two-parter).
Collision doesn't seem to have a medical person or receptionist (Vernon's character description) appearing that much, so I then must take it the plots are not entirely similar.
But again, if anything, it was a remake, not a ripoff, an updating, if you will.
It seems it has something to do with lisencing or ownership being renewed and often times, owners of some properties don't concern themselves with doing this, which is what happened in America with Wonderful Life.
It fell in public domain and was reshown endlessly at the holiday season, becoming a Christmas classic, even tho the events only take place on Christmas, but it is hardly a Christmas story.
Oh, come on. Did you see it? I'm guessing that's a No, since the two have nothing in common except the literary device of a car crash.
I'm so tired of the screams of "ripoff!" every time someone explores a very common theme or concept (or setting), as if that setting alone is proprietary.
Nope. It's not. "Collision" shares nothing with "Accident" -- no characters, no storylines, certainly no investigation as the primary tapestry for the story. All the two have in common is (1) many characters, and (2) a car crash. It's not a ripoff in even the remotest sense. It's an exploration of a fairly common literary device -- the convergence of several characters on a single moment in time. Car crashes are common settings and thematic devices for this kind of thing.
I've hated other explorations of similar ideas (hated Haggis's "Crash"), but Anthony Horowitz wrote a lovely, elegant and restrained story here that completely pulled me in. I thought it was superb, unique, and poignant.
I not only watched "Accident" when it was first screened but recorded it and watched it again several times over the years until the tape eventually broke, which was only abou a year ago, so I can actually remember "Accident" pretty well - and having also recorded "Collision" and now watched it twice, I can categorically, and confidently, state that there is no way in rips "Accident" off at all!
The basic fact of the matter is that "Accident" and "Collision" only share one thing - they have the (very common) theme of a road crash. However, the main theme and storyline - and the characters - in the two series are not even remotely similar beyond that!
The whole idea of "Accident" was that the lives of ten total strangers involved in the crash became intertwined. Each episode merely concentrated on the accident as it affected one person or one couple involved individually. "Collision" was totally different, as the crash unravelled a series of underlying themes (murder, drug smuggling, embezzlement etc.)
Perfection is boring - flaunt the imperfection!
I'm not sure that there's been a completely original story since The Epic of Gilgamesh was written. I'm not even sure that one was completely original.
shareYou're absolutely right. I don't know if your alluding to the literary theory of intertextuality? According to Intertextuality claims any product of the creative process, can be thought of as a recompiled version, of previous literature.
Like music, the same notes have been used numerous times before over the millennia. It's all about taking those same notes, and groups of those notes, and doing something a bit new and interesting with them. Otherwise, it's just noise.
shareAh, but that doesn't feed the average (but not the "above average") poster's need to denigrate whatever is being discussed.
Given that any story initiated at an accident means it's a ripoff of an earlier accident-based movie, I can only assume all war movies are ripoffs of 'Birth of a Nation', all musicals are ripoffs of 'The Jazz Singer'...which would make 'West Side Story' a double ripoff of both that film and Shakespeare. And so on.
Nah, I think it's just people regarding themselves as being clever by calling ripoff, BS, or my personal favorite "too PC".
John D McDonald's novel Cry Hard Cry Fast, first published in 1955, is the closest thing to this story that i can call to mind.
Smashup on Interstate 5, while allegedly based on a novel by Elleston Trevor, is a lot closer to the McDonald than to the Trevor.