Channel Ten Officially Does Something Right

Shane Bourne and Tom Gleisner in a stereotypically boring promotional shot.

From The Australian:

US network NBC is the latest international programmer to pick up the rights to Working Dog's series Thank God You're Here.

The network home of ER and America's Got Talent will film a pilot of Ten's improvisational variety show in November after coming to Melbourne to watch episodes prepared here.

FremantleMedia has already sold the format in 10 territories and versions of the program created by Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro and Tom Gleisner are screening in Denmark and the Netherlands. Denmark's program debuted extremely well on Sunday and the Dutch version improved in its second week.

Working Dog's Michael Hirsh concedes it is early days for any potential US version.

"We're realistic that we know pilots are pilots and series are series," he said. "I know that, basically, NBC wants a hit show.

"We got on to their radar like the rest. When shows are successful somewhere, people are looking to see if they can make it work for their own territory."

You know what? It's not like me to be positive, and I don't think it'll be a blockbuster, but with the depth of talent in the US, I can see this being a success. (That's assuming that Fifi Box isn't part of the package deal, of course.)

Can you believe it? Ten have actually fostered something original that has a chance of making a world-wide impact. I'm in shock.

To the internationalists who float through here, would you be interested in watching a show like this?