US lawyers lacking this real life

By FIONA RAE

Television in the 90s will be known, among other things, as an era of reality TV globalisation. From Big Brother to Popstars, ideas swirled around the globe, with greater or lesser success depending on local tastes.

Given that it's been happening in drama for a while, it's not a surprising turn of events. After all, Three's Company, which started in 1977, was just an American version of Man About the House.

There's a long list of British shows that the US has seized on, including recent versions of Men Behaving Badly and Queer as Folk.

And now there's a US version of This Life, the brilliant drama that ran for two series in Britain and made stars of Daniela Nardini and Jack Davenport.

Its called First Years (8.30pm TV4), and if you think that sounds like a pale imitation of the edgy, seminal British show, you'd be right.

US network NBC thought so, cancelling the series after three episodes, which means that if you manage to sit through the last six episodes you'll be seeing something American audiences didn't.

Instead of some rundown terrace house in North London, the young lawyers of First Years have a pretty nice-looking pad somewhere in San Francisco.

Instead of grotty, cramped and crowded chambers, First Years has a pretty nice-looking office with huge expanses of desk. Some of them even have their own offices.

And instead of the acerbic, wonderful, bitchy, sexy, smart and very cool Daniela Nardini, we've got Samantha Mathis as Anna. She must have thought it sounded like a good idea at the time.

Her version of Anna is a tough chick who can burp like a guy. She and Miles (Ken Marino, who perhaps should have known better after also appearing in the US version of Men Behaving Badly) have had a fling. There is sexual tension.

Egg and Riley are the stable couple. Egg (James Roday) looks vaguely Britpop, which to Americans means scruffy. He wears patterned shirts and loose jackets.

Riley (they must have thought Milly was too English) is played by Sydney Tamila Poitier, daughter of Sidney Poitier.

She's the hard-working, perfect one although viewers may remember that in This Life Milly had an affair with her boss, so who knows what could happen.

And there's a gay one, Sam (Eric Schaeffer), who's out and proud and very tidy.

It's like Friends crossed with The Practice.

First Years fails to recognise that This Life wasn't really about lawyers at all, it was about their messy, grubby personal lives. Work made an impact when something went wrong.

It's not what Anna did at work that you remember, it's the moment Miles told her he would stop his wedding if she told him to.

And London's grottiness was a better backdrop than sparkling San Francisco.

There is one redeeming feature. Executive producer Jill Gordon said: "Nobody is neurotic. If any do become neurotic or whiny, we will kill them off".

It's a small mercy.