According to Jim, Law and Order to be reversioned abroad

Göre Yakup. Well, that's a rough translation of what According to Jim would be in Turkish. And, you're asking, why the hell would we want to say According to Jim in Turkish (or English, for that matter)? That's because the long-running ABC sitcom will be reversioned for Turkish audiences.

Now, you're probably asking yourself, "What the hell does reversioning mean?" First, stop swearing. Second, as far as we can tell, reversioning is when the rights to a show are bought by a foreign producer, who then develops the show for their own audiences. We've done it here plenty of times for shows like All in the Family, Three's Company and The Office (all British imports) and international producers have done it for American shows like Friends. In this instance, according to an article in Variety, Jim is being reversioned by Turkish producer Medyapim for local broadcaster ATV. Medyapim has already formatted another ABC sitcom, the recently canceled Hope & Faith, for its local market.

Meanwhile, a bit north of Turkey in the small country of Russia, production company 2V and Global American Television (GATV) have announced that they will co-produce Russian formatted versions of Dick Wolf's Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: SVU. According to the press release, these two primetime U.S. shows will be the first to be reformatted for the Russian local market. This is the second and third reformatting of the Law & Order franchise abroad; a French version of Criminal Intent is slated to premiere in 2007.

So, the next time you travel abroad, turn on the television and take a look to see if any of the local shows look familiar. Who knows, you may eventually see According to Jim in French (Selon Jacques), Italian (Secondo Giacomo) or even Dutch (Volgens Jacobus).

[Translations courtesy of Babelfish and Wikipedia]