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Ty condenses his British makeover series into a special for ABC

by Jason Hughes, posted Jul 29th 2009 8:03PM
Ty PenningtonThis Sunday at 7 PM, you can tune in to Ty's Great British Adventure on ABC. In it, Ty Pennington, the host of ABC's popular Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, heads to the UK to do what he does on EM for a sleepy town in the UK. Except that this episode, which is being aired as a one hour special, was a six episode series in Britain. In fact, the series has had three seasons already; this one is from a year ago.

Ty said the biggest challenge for him was how polite and laid back the Brits are; he could barely get them motivated to get things done in his one week time frame. "Let's sit down to tea and talk about this," they'd say instead.

Is that how they were able to reduce more than three hours of UK programming to 42 minutes and change for the states? Cut out a couple of hours of tea and polite conversation? Or do they not think American audiences have the patience to sit through too many episodes of the same makeover?

Still, Ty took on a makeover project. He used local contractors and workers to get the job done. He did all of this within a week. Isn't that what Extreme Makeover: Home Edition does? I'll be tuning in, but I'd be surprised if this finds as much of an audience under these circumstances as it could under the EM title in the fall.

But if you are insisting it's alternative summer programming, then just import the whole damned series and bill it as a second Ty Pennington project the way FOX has Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares in different seasons for Gordon Ramsay. If it goes over well, you can now foot the bill for Ty's Great American Adventure and have him helping local communities.

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RobynM

Ty in the UK? What'd they ever do to deserve that?

A fair lot of people here want to shove that megaphone down his throat, so I can imagine there'd be culture shock issues.

July 30 2009 at 4:21 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tony

Those poor Brits.

July 29 2009 at 9:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Anita

"do they not think American audiences have the patience to sit through too many episodes of the same makeover?" Ding Ding. But, what is up with these makeover shows switching coasts? Gordon Ramsey and the What Not to Wear Women come over here to do their thing, and now we go over there to do our thing. I wonder what would happen if people continued to do their respective makeover shows in their own countries? Well, I guess, a mixture of familiarity in a different locale is always needed every now and again. Hence, Saved by the Bell in Hawaii --

July 29 2009 at 8:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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