Television has always borrowed across borders and across decades, taking a premise that worked in one language or one era and rebuilding it somewhere else. The results range from carbon copies to genuine reinventions that surpass their source material entirely. The series on this list all began somewhere else or something else, were taken apart and reassembled, and in several cases became more famous in their second form than they ever were in their first.
#1: The Office (US, 2005–2013)
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s original BBC series ran for fourteen episodes and was widely considered complete. NBC’s adaptation, developed by Greg Daniels, struggled in its first season before finding its own identity through Michael Scott’s more sympathetic characterization. It ran for nine seasons, produced an entirely separate cultural phenomenon, and is now more widely seen globally than the British original, which is the most complete reversal a television adaptation has ever achieved.
