The BBC ripped off The Games, say the show’s creators
Ross Stevenson and John Clarke have published an editorial suggesting that the BBC’s new satirical show Twenty Twelve is a rip off of their comedy series The Games.
The Games, a satire about the preparation for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, aired on ABC TV in 1998-1999, and a new series set to air later this year has been commissioned by the Nine Network.
According to Stevenson and Clarke, they spoke with producer Rick McKenna in 2006, shortly after the 2012 Olympic Games were awarded to London.
“Rick McKenna travelled to London and met with BBC comedy head Jon Plowman. At a later date Plowman introduced McKenna to writer John Morton with the prospect that perhaps we might consider Morton as one of the writers on the project. Morton was lent DVDs of The Games. At the time he acknowledged he had never previously seen nor heard of the show and was impressed and keenly interested,” they said.
The writers claim that, after “almost four years of email exchanges”, Morton and Plowman made the Olympic organising committee satire Twenty Twelve “without our participation or permission”.
“In other words, it seems that in 2008/9 Morton had already had the idea he’d never heard of and was so excited by, and he was interested in obtaining episodes of The Games only so he could check out how someone had created his original idea in Australia, 12 years previously. We have suggested that once Mr Morton finds out that repressed memory is not an Olympic event, perhaps he could return the DVDs,” said Stevenson and Clarke.
The BBC, however, has responded saying that Twenty Twelve is “an original and distinctive comedy series”, delivered “through a distinctively British sense of humour”.
“We have investigated the complaints made in relation to The Games and have found no evidence to support the allegations of copying. No use has been made of any material deriving from The Games and we are confident that the allegations are without foundation’,” said a spokesperson.
A new series of The Games has been commissioned by the Nine Network.
