Television is, of course, a worldwide industry and has been for a long time. Since the earliest days, there has been a cross-fertilisation of ideas between British and American writers, and concepts have crossed the Atlantic both ways. Some succeed and some fail: the concepts of the likes of Steptoe and Son and The Office have thrived in American soil, whereas the less said about our attempt to imitage the Golden Girls with the Brighton Belles, the better. There are however, deep in the bowels of television studios and archives everywhere, many deep, dark and dirty secrets, and among these are the television industry’s failures. Failures so embarrassing and so humiliating that they can’t even be shown in the small hours of Tuesday morning on ITV4. And yet, in the interests of truth, investigative journalism and a cheap giggle, the Vervoid is probing deep into the irritable bowels of the monster that is television and shining a light into the duodenum of the transatlantic television industry. For these are some of the most misconceived ideas ever to occur to televison executives- and this is TV Transatlantic.

The great and influential US television executive Harry P Birdwelder was known for nothing if not his eye for a great idea, so when the ANBS network were looking for a new cop show in the mid-1990s, Harry cast his eye over the most popular series running in England and found one he thought would translate. Inspector Morse had been running for several years and had revived John Thaw’s career, so here, Harry thought, was a show which, properly translated to an American setting, would allow an established actor to be cast in the lead role. The Oxford location transferred easily enough to Yale and the surroundings of New Haven, Connecticut, however at this stage Birdwelder began to alter the format, to suit American tastes and ultimately in too radical a fashion. The pilot episode saw hardened New Haven cop Ernie Morse busting the drug dealers supplying Yale students, however in the car chase which followed, Morse’s car flipped over at speed. Tragically injured in the crash, although Morse retained all his faculties he was confined to a wheelchair and could only communicate by use of a special Morse telegraph device (this being the idea of a promising young executive who pointed out that since Inspector Gadget had plenty of gadgets, an American audience would expect Inspector Morse to have a similar Morse-related gimmick) or by the instinctive rapport he developed with his German shepherd dog Lewis (this idea being derived from the waitress sent in to replenish the coffee, who went on to become a promising young television executive). Although the plots of several episodes were drafted and Empty Nest star Richard Mulligan mooted for the part of Morse, ultimately both the network and the British rights holders went distinctly cool on the American take and the series was quietly shelved.

While the BBC were comparatively quick to purchase ‘Star Trek’ for UK transmission, it is a little-known and yet crucial fact that for a brief period (between an eleven o’clock Jaffa Cake and a particularly full lunch in the BBC canteen, if we are to be precise) the BBC briefly considered buying not the series itself, but the rights to the scripts and format, intending to make their own series along broadly the same lines. Given that Out of the Unknown had temporarily ceased production, the BBC considered that the resources and technical ability existed, and so a bright young producer was sent away to envisage how the series could be made in monochrome and on videotape and to reflect a British audience’s expectations. If James T Kirk was a substitute John F Kennedy, Captain Derek "Squiffy" Addingham (to be played by screen veteran Richard Todd) would be a more avuncular Harold Macmillan type, difficult to dislike and with a firm conviction that the best way to resolve a crisis was with a cup of tea and a slice of Auntie Flo’s Dundee cake or, when extreme measures were called for, a half of lukewarm bitter. Andre Maranne was mooted for the role of the second-in-command half-alien Eigorf, on the grounds that the effect that Leonard Nimoy’s Spock had had in the Deep South by having pointy ears could be more or less replicated in Guildford by speaking with a French accent. The basic format remained the same; the HMSS Golden Hind II would explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilisations and, while giving them a friendly pat on the back, explain concepts such as personal hygiene, roughage and decent sanitary arrangements. There was, however, a general feeling that the expansive view of Star Trek was not entirely suited to production at the BBC at the time, particularly when a potential costume designer asked what was available to fulfil the series’ demand for multifarious monsters of different shapes, sizes, species and origins, and was pointed in the direction of the BBC foam machine, which was being refurbished after being used every week in Patrick Troughton’s Doctor Who. The idea was quietly forgotten about and the paperwork placed inside the film cans holding several episodes of ‘Marco Polo’ for safe keeping.