Fox's Welcome to Flatch shows the pitfalls of adapting British comedies for American viewers

TheWrap

The American remake of the BBC3 2017-2020 mockumentary This Country "is nowhere near the misfire that a show like NBC’s Coupling was, but it’s also definitely nowhere near the success that the American version of The Office came to be," says LaToya Ferguson. "Developed by executive producer Jenny Bicks, with Paul Feig (an alum of The Office) also serving as executive producer (and director of a few of the season’s episodes, including the pilot), something is definitely lost in this new approach to the mild-mannered series. Like This Country (created by brother-sister duo Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper, who also starred as cousins Kerry and 'Kurtan'), Welcome to Flatch centers on young adults in a rural setting, specifically cousins-slash-codependent best friends Kelly (Chelsea Holmes) and 'Shrub' (Sam Straley). And where This Country took place in a small village in the Cotswolds, Welcome to Flatch is set in the fictional Ohio town of Flatch. With this rural living comes town rituals, eccentricities, legends, and other mundanities, with everyone knowing each other’s business. But the biggest change between the two series, right off the bat, is that Welcome to Flatch is much more of an ensemble show, compared to the two-hander approach to This Country. And to that end, Welcome to Flatch is able to create a fuller and bigger world not unlike the character-rich universe of NBC’s Parks and Recreation. But turning Flatch into an ensemble proves to be the show’s biggest strength and weakness when it comes to its cast of colorful characters."

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• Welcome to Flatch steers clear of the civic-minded optimism of a Parks & Rec or the heart-tugging warmth of a Schitt’s Creek, offering a fun place to visit without complications
• There’s plenty of comic potential on Welcome to Flatch, but the writing struggles to home in on it, instead relying on its actors to elevate the material
• Welcome to Flatch is most promising when it veers away from the broad jokes about the heartland of the country and gives the people some room to breathe
• For Paul Feig, Welcome to Flatch is the most deeply he's been involved in a TV show since creating Freaks & Geeks: “I want nothing more than to make 200 episodes of Welcome to Flatch," Feig says in a New York Times profile, adding: "here are stories that I can’t tell in movies because they’re just too small. But with TV, going, 'Oh gosh, I can really go granular in this' — that’s why I fell in love with This Country, which then became Flatch. I was like, I want to be personally involved in this. I want to direct these. I want to write a bunch of these. I really want to be in the mix. Flatch spoke to me because of my Midwestern upbringing and because of loving those types of characters so much. I also love the docu-style of comedy, which is the greatest way to do comedy on television because it’s so immediate, so in the moment."