I used to live in Spain in the early 2000s. This was during the pre-financial crisis of 2008. One of my habits was watching a very successful Spanish TV sitcom called "Aquí no hay quien viva" every Thursday night. It was witty and entertaining with the right combination of sarcastic humour and tender humanity. Each episode was around 80 to 90 minutes long (unusually long for sitcoms, I know) and it involved virtually the same group of 18 to 20 actors on every episode plus a few guests in minor roles. All the actors, plots and subplots shared similar time and focus allocation, creating a wonderful multilayered interaction amongst characters.
More information here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqu%C3%AD_no_hay_quien_viva Anyway, after more than 90 episodes over 3 years and 5 very successful seasons, the programme was cancelled whilst still incredibly popular due to contractual difficulties and -to some degree- exhaustion of the actors. Because of its sustained success, the producers decided to continue 'milking' the product for as long as possible: they invented a new sitcom which followed a different and unrelated storyline but they decided to employ the same team: the same script writers, the same directors and 90% of the actors in new roles. That was strange. For example, actors who played neighbours in the former comedy, all of a sudden became family members or romantic partners under different names. Most actors transplanted most of the personality traits from the former characters to the new ones albeit under a different identity.
I was shocked! How could anybody take this seriously? It was as if the old characters were involved in a desperate exercise of self-plagiarism.
Even the visuals were almost identical:
To make matters worse, the new sitcom repeated some of the most celebrated trademarks of the former TV programme but absurdly and grotesquely exaggerated in an attempt to rekindle the magic (and to keep the money coming!). The fresh ingenuity of the original was gone and there was little room for subtle humour or credible stories. Everything was kind of reminiscent of the original but coarser, contrived and purposefully OTT to keep the momentum going.
Can you imagine something similar in the UK or elsewhere?
