US TV is notorious for plundering the output of the rest of the world and culturally reconstituting it for domestic audiences, and you may or may not be aware that in 2007 there was an attempt made to produce an American version of Channel 4’s popular geeky workplace sitcom THE IT CROWD. Despite the pilot episode being a virtually shot-for-shot retread, it somehow managed to also be a pale comparison and quite rightly never made it any further.

 

However, undeterred by such hurdles as quality, Bill Lawrence (SCRUBS) has been taken on by NBC to take another go at it. It’s possible that with the runaway success of THE BIG BANG THEORY, along with comic book adaptations ascending to mainstream acceptability and stratospheric profitability, networks are fully accepting the potential of marketing to geeks and nerds, and as THE IT CROWD was basically a show about geeks and nerds it seems to have been perceived as a potential money-maker.

The new pilot will be written by Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan, a writing and producing team who have previously worked on the likes of SCRUBS, COMMUNITY AND FAMILY GUY and while it will likely be a part of next year’s pilot season free-for-all, as the deal was for a put-pilot it means that even if the series doesn’t get picked up, the episode will at the very least air on TV.

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