Two years ago, I posted the first ten minutes of the pilot for “Misfits,” a British show about working-class teenagers who acquire superpowers after a freak electrical storm. At the time, I called it “like ‘Heroes,’ but British and not crappy.” The show has since gone on to become a critical and commercial success: it won the BAFTA award for best drama series last year and gained a considerable American audience on Hulu this summer.

You know what that means: TIME TO AMERICANIZE THIS MUTHA. The production company run by Josh Schwartz (creator of “The O.C.” and several other, crappier shows) has acquired the rights to show.

Schwartz will team up with U.K. Misfits creator Howard Overman to write a U.S. translation. There’s no network attached as of yet, but given the response to the original series, it’s hard not to imagine it finding a Stateside TV home…

Schwartz and Overman are foregoing the traditional development process, in which a network buys a pitch from a scribe and later decides whether or not to film a pilot. Instead, the two have opted to write the new Misfits on spec… One advantage of the spec path is that it lets creators develop a pilot without networks nitpicking development details. [Vulture]

Hmmmm… Original creator involved AND no network involvement in the pilot development? I’m downright hopeful that this could be a faithful adaptation. And say what you will about Josh Schwartz, but he made the shows that made Rachel Bilson and Blake Lively famous. That gets you some leeway in my book. Enough leeway to ignore Mischa Barton in that equation.

Gordon Ramsay is apparently at work on yet another TV show — this time for the UK’s Channel 4 — and he claims that Costa Rican shark-hunting gangs interfered with his filming by pouring gasoline on him and holding him at gunpoint.

Ramsay told a newspaper: “It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, completely unregulated. We traced some of the biggest culprits to Costa Rica. These gangs operate from places like forts, with barbed wire and gun towers.

“At one point, I managed to shake off the people keeping us away, ran up some stairs to a rooftop and looked down to see thousands of fins, drying on rooftops as far as the eye could see. When I got back downstairs, they tipped a barrel of petrol over me.”

He added: “Back at the wharf, there were people pointing rifles at us to stop us filming. A van pulled up and these seedy characters made us stand against a wall. The police came and advised us to leave the country. They said, ‘If you set one foot in there, they’ll shoot you.’” [The Sun]

Seeing as how this comes from a fame-whoring TV personality as reported by a British tabloid, I’m sure this fantastic story is all 100% true. Isn’t that right, Mr. Ramsay?

Back in December, the first couple minutes of “The Increasingly Bad Decisions of Todd Margaret” were leaked online. The show, written by and starring David Cross, was a pilot for Britain’s Channel 4 that was recently picked up for a full series run. But wait! Don’t fly to England just so you can watch the pilot — the entire first episode is right here online (first part above, second two videos below — and thanks to reader “kahlua groove” for the tip).

Anyway, watch and enjoy — you know, if you’ve got 25 minutes at work where you don’t actually need to do any work. The humor, based on awkward situations and the ineptitude of Cross’s titular character, sometimes falls flat when characters’ actions veer off into the unrealistic, but it mostly succeeds as a comedy. A helluva lot more than the average sitcom pilot in America. Isn’t that right, Michael Strahan?

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This is the first ten minutes of the first episode of “Misfits,” a British show that debuted on Channel 4 last month. It’s kind of like NBC’s “Heroes,” except with a Breakfast Club premise and swearing. From Wikipedia:

Misfits follows five teenagers on community service who get struck by lightning and are given special powers. Kelly (Lauren Socha) becomes telepathic, Curtis (Nathan Stewart Jarrett) can rewind time by small amounts, Alisha (Antonia Thomas) can send people into a sexual frenzy when they touch her skin, Simon (Iwan Rheon) can make himself invisible when he feels he’s being ignored. Seemingly left unaffected is smart alec Nathan (Robert Sheehan).

This looks outstanding to me, but mostly because everyone talks like Jason Statham and there’s a sexy black girl. Oh, I’m sorry, did I say “sexy black girl”? I meant, “Oi fink dat black bird’s right fit, now innit?”

[via Topless Robot]

Back in June, I wrote about a new show for the UK’s Channel Four starring Will Arnett, David Cross, and Spike Jonze called “The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret.” It sounded awesome.

Here’s the first clip. It is awesome. You really can’t go wrong with Will Arnett swearing at people and David Cross lying like an awkward little weasel. HBO needs to buy the American rights to this with a quickness. I want more of this immediately. Like yesterday immediately.

[BuzzFeed]