Thursday

Don't bet the feta
on 'Greek Life'

Great debut, but movie adaptations often stumble

By Ed Robertson

    When “My Big Fat Greek Life” premiered Monday night to smash ratings on CBS, it should have come as little surprise. The movie on which it was based, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," was the surprise box office hit of 2002.
   Small-screen adaptations of big screen smashes are a time-honored tradition in network television, with good reason: they provide movie studios with another opportunity to squeeze even more money out of box-office cash cows.
    Warner Bros. began the genre back in the ‘50s with TV versions of “Casablanca” and “King’s Row.” It wasn’t long before Universal, Fox and other studios followed suit with “Going My Way,” “Bus Stop,” and “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
    Over the years, we’ve seen the likes of “Serpico,” “The Cowboys,” “City of Angels” (“Chinatown” adapted for TV) and, more recently, “A League of Their Own,” “Working Girl” and “The Client.”
   TV's "Greek Life" series picks up where the movie left off and features most of the original cast members, to boot. Rita Wilson, who produced the movie with husband Tom Hanks, is aboard as executive producer, along with Brad Grey (“The Sopranos”).
    After Monday's “preview,” following “Everybody Loves Raymond,” the show will settle into its regular Sunday 8 p.m. slot on March 2, safely hammocked between “60 Minutes” and the CBS Sunday night movie.
   So "Greek Life" should be a huge success, right?
   Not necessarily. Even with its brilliant debut, the show may have a tough time ahead of it.
    Historically speaking, most television shows based on popular movies fail to catch on, primarily because the TV adaptations are watered-down versions of the original.
    Theatrical movies, after all, are larger than life. Not only is the film itself projected onto a huge screen, everything about the movie is done on a grand scale, from the violence to the language to the pyrotechnics.
   TV budgets and TV standards being what they are, though, it's nigh impossible to match the quality or capture the essence of the movie within the confines of network episodic television. In most cases, the “essence” of the movie is directly related to whoever the star happens to be.
   Of course, most TV producers can't afford to hire a Jack Nicholson or an Al Pacino. Even if they could, they know most movie actors simply won’t subject themselves to the grind of a weekly series. So they get the best TV actor they can find to step in, and hope the audience forgets that it was Nicholson or Pacino who made the role work in the first place.
   In most cases, however, the audience doesn’t forget, which is why Wayne Rogers (who assumed Nicholson’s role in “City of Angels”) and David Birney (TV’s Serpico) never had a chance.
    That said, for every rule, there are exceptions, and “M*A*S*H,” “The Paper Chase” and “What’s Happening” (the TV version of “Cooley High”) are among them. The small screen counterparts not only captured the flavor of the originals, in some cases, they even exceeded them.
   “M*A*S*H,” “Chase” and “Happening” all succeeded on television because they weren’t based on “big” movies. While their box office predecessors each made money, none of them were “star driven” in the traditional sense.
    “M*A*S*H” may have put Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland on the map, but neither was exactly a household name before the movie’s release. In fact, director Robert Altman made a deliberate attempt to cast the picture with actors who were not widely known to moviegoers.
    Similarly, while John Houseman had a long career as a film director, he had never appeared on screen before playing Professor Kingsfield in “The Paper Chase.” So far as the audience was concerned, he, too, was relatively unknown.
     In addition, “Cooley High,” as well as the big-screen “M*A*S*H” and “Chase,” were all character pieces with episodic storylines. That not only gave the actors in the TV versions a better chance of making the characters their own, it also meant the format itself was bound to translate well on the small screen.
    And did it ever. “M*A*S*H,” of course, won 11 Emmys in the course of its 13 seasons. “Paper Chase” had a solid three-year run on Showtime after its first season on CBS, while “What’s Happening” was a steady performer for ABC throughout the late ‘70s.
    “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was likewise a character-driven, “little” movie with an episodic plot. In fact, other than series star and creator Nia Vardalos, all of the returning movie cast members are established TV veterans: Michael Constantine (“Room 222”), Andrea Martin (“SCTV”), Lainie Kazan (“Paper Chase”).
   Assuming the past holds true, that would suggest the future bodes well for “My Big Fat Greek Life.”

Ed Robertson is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area who covers television.

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