The US remake of This Country, named Welcome to Flatch has released a new trailer and Fox has announced it will stream its first seven episodes on-demand on Hulu on the same day of its broadcast launch on Thursday 17th March.
This is a first for Fox. Michael Thorn, president of entertainment at Fox, said, “It’s obvious right now that it’s incredibly hard to launch any TV show in this marketplace and we want to do everything we can to set the show up for success. What we wanted to do was take advantage of our own air and give it the impactful launch that we give to all of our shows but also try something different and as out of the box as this television show is and try something unique with our SVOD partners so people could watch it at their own time and fall in love with these characters.”
The US remake of the British mockumentary has replaced the Mucklowes with the Mallets, though they remain cousins and best friends who share their lives with a documentary crew. Seann William Scott plays Father Joe, in place of the original long-suffering Reverend Seaton.
Paul Feig, who has previously worked on another British export The Office directed and executive produced this series. Speaking to Deadline Feig discussed his experiences of making a British show fit for an American audience: “On The Office, the first six episodes [NBC] did, they really leaned in to the Ricky Gervais-style of the British Office. Ricky’s character was kind of mean but American audiences weren’t sure if they wanted to get behind a lead character that was mean. It was really that second season that we realized that he needs to be well meaning. That’s the same thing [with Welcome to Flatch] because This Country, they’re very challenging characters. We didn’t want to take that away from them but we also wanted them to be loveable and fun, like the British one, but maybe give them a little more humanity.”
We at Funny Women would love to know what Kerry and Kurtan would have to say about having more humanity injected into their American counterparts…