This from Creative Screenwriting Magazine:
After three seasons on UK TV, writer-performers Matt Lucas and David Walliams are bringing their satirical sketch comedy series Little Britain to HBO, where their established UK characters will be joined by a host of new American creations.
Styled as a mock-documentary examining the day-to-day lives of eccentric British characters, Little Britain introduced viewers to characters like Daffyd Thomas, the self-proclaimed only gay in his Welsh village, and Vicky Pollard, an incoherent juvenile delinquent with a predilection for inept prevarication. Now, these creations, as well as dozens of others, will be joined by Matt Lucas and David Walliams' take on American culture in HBO's Little Britain USA -- a new series that serves both as a continuation of the UK original and fresh starting point for new viewers.
How did your writing partnership evolve?
Matt Lucas: We met in 1990 [at] the National Youth Theatre. It was another four years before we decided to do a show in the Edinburgh Festival. We were fortunate and got a TV series on cable off the back of that first show. Then, we did a series at the BBC called Rock Profile, where we dressed up as pop stars. We didn't do direct impersonations of them -- we did interpretations of them. We'd do the Bee Gees with David as Barry Gibb, but Barry was a lion who ruled the other Bee Gees -- quite surreal. Then we started developing Little Britain as a radio show. We did a TV pilot, three seasons in the UK, a tour, and we had an approach from HBO to come over here.
The Little Britain characters of Lou and his allegedly handicapped friend Andy started out on Rock Profiles as warped versions of Lou Reed and Andy Warhol, didn't they?
David Walliams: Yeah. It was like Cribs. Lou Reed was showing his house and Andy Warhol [was] staying in the spare room. We were doing the voices we did in Little Britain and thought, "We're onto something here." We developed them as proper characters. It's a weird process -- each character has a different sort of genesis.
And Matt was doing washed-up thespian Bernard Chumley long before the character appeared in Little Britain…
Lucas: I'd been doing that on the stand-up circuit in London from 1992, and then that's the character that used to appear in the live shows that David and I did together. We'd been working together five or six years before we even came up with the radio show of Little Britain.
How did you decide which characters from your various acts would coalesce into Little Britain?
Walliams: We started writing sketches and wanted to put them together in an interesting way. In Britain, there'd been things like The League of Gentlemen where there'd been more of a concept than just sketches.
Lucas: We didn't want to do "The Matt and Dave Show."
Walliams: No. We came up with this concept of contemporary British characters with narration, like it was a documentary of some sort. That, I think, really helped us in writing more stuff, because it meant that what we were writing [were] characters mainly in contemporary British settings rather than spoofs of films or impersonations of people. Although I enjoy watching those things, I think the public really responds to original characters.
The concept drove the writing in a very good way. There was hardly anything we had to let go of. It made us really focus, and I think that's why the show took off in the way it did. People thought, "Ah, yes, I know someone like Vicky Pollard," or "I've been to a Weight Watchers group." I think it was really healthy that the concept drove us in that direction.
How did the idea of an American Little Britain come about?
Walliams: It wasn't obvious what we should do. People would say, "Whatever you do, don't change anything." Someone else would say, "Of course, you're going to have to make all the characters American or no one is going to watch it." So we started off thinking we'd make some of the characters American. We'd try to find what Vicky Pollard was in America, but it felt a bit dishonest because we hadn't observed it. We'd grown up in Britain, so we'd obviously witnessed all these kinds of things. Eventually, we decided to keep the British characters we'd established British, have them in American settings -- so Vicky Pollard is in a boot camp, Daffyd's enrolled in University, Sebastian's become the prime minister -- and then write new characters that are American. It is, to some extent, an experiment, because we don't know if people are going to like the same things in the American version that they liked in the British version.
Lucas: The idea is we compare and contrast the British and Americans. If we'd made the show for network television, we probably would not be in it and we probably would have cast two or four [actors] and the characters would be American --
Walliams: We'd treat the characters as archetypes.
Lucas: You'd have a teenaged delinquent, someone who thinks they are the only gay in their town, a presidential aid who's in love with the president and all those things, which could have worked.
Walliams: When Chris Albrecht at HBO commissioned it, he said, "I want you guys to do a show." They've obviously got a great tradition of working with British talent -- Sascha Baron Cohen with Ali G in the USA, Ricky [Gervais] with Extras -- so it was obviously an amazing opportunity for us.
How did you determine which characters to import for Little Britain USA?
Walliams: The ones people liked and thought were funny (laughs).
Lucas: And the ones we felt could either continue to exist as they did or be reinvented successfully. [For] characters like Vicky Pollard, we explain that she tried to burn down one of the rides in Disneyworld and has subsequently found herself in a juvie boot camp in Utah. Daffydd has enrolled at university and proclaims himself the only gay on the campus. Sebastian has become the British prime minister and develops a crush on an Obama-style president.
Walliams: We felt we couldn't have a lot of backstory. We didn't want it be like you'd missed something if you hadn't seen the British series, because we assume that 90-percent of the people who tune in on HBO don't know it at all. So, we're starting again. Although we've transplanted the characters, it doesn't matter. You can watch episode one of Little Britain USA and it's a totally new thing.
Lucas: Or, you can watch episode one as somebody who's seen all the other shows and go, "Ah, it's season four."
Walliams: That's our intention. We did recordings in front of audiences in Los Angeles and our hardcore fans came and were really into it. Actually -- this will sound arrogant -- we had to turn down the laughter and applause because they were pleased to see the characters. Vicky Pollard would come on and they'd all cheer and applaud, but we had to take that out, because it's alienating for someone at home watching the show thinking, "Why is everyone applauding at their entrance?"
Did you modify any existing characters for the new series?
Lucas: There is one character where we unashamedly changed the nationality. We did have a character in season three of the UK show who was a disgraced politician called Sir Norman Fry. Nancy Geller at HBO was very keen on that, certainly post-Larry Craig, and Eliot Spitzer as well.
Walliams: We didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to satirize Larry Craig, who did have a very convoluted explanation for why he was in the toilet tapping someone's leg. It was that thing where you write something and something really happens that far outstrips what you've written.
Lucas: So, on this one occasion, we take a concept we did in Britain and reinvent it for the American audience --
Walliams: -- but with an American senator. It wasn't a strong character in England. It was more a premise sketch.
Lucas: It was the only time that an idea we did in Britain would work much better [in America].
What kind of American characters have you created?
Lucas: There are a pair of characters we call the gym buddies -- Tom and Mark -- they're work-out partners and they're visually among the more interesting things we're able to do. They have extraordinary muscle suits with tiny penises.
Walliams: We've got a cutesy mother and daughter and when the mum puts the daughter to bed, they have a little game… "I love you more than snowflakes…"
Lucas: "I love you more than muffins…"
Walliams: That goes on until the daughter says something really rude. It's very amusing. We have a woman who talks to her dog, in the way people do, and then the dog starts telling her to do bad things. Interestingly, the gym buddies and the mother and daughter feel more American somehow. But the dog woman could have been a British character. There's nothing quintessentially British or American about her. We felt that because it was set in America, she should be American.
Lucas: But, there are characters we probably couldn't have done in Britain to the same effect, and one of those is a character that David plays -- he's an astronaut and was the eighth man on the moon.
Walliams: That's what I enjoyed the most about this series -- the things we couldn't have done before, because [the British have] obviously never been to the moon. Inventing new characters and seeing them blossom is also a really exciting thing because you get used to the ones you've already made work.
Was there a difference in writing for the BBC and HBO -- were there different standards to conform to?
Lucas: I Think HBO was more hands on, but that's by no means a criticism of them and by no means a criticism of the BBC -- they just do it in different ways. We were grateful for their aid.
Walliams: Especially since we were entering this new culture where we were outsiders. We needed more guidance.
Lucas: Also, we haven't been hired as writers on anyone else's show because that is a different thing and you defer those creative judgments. But we haven't. In this case, HBO have approached us and asked us to bring Little Britain to their channel, so they understand we've already made three seasons, so they ask us, "How do you do this or that?" When we say we've got to have more rehearsal time or we want to go away and rewrite that sketch or we tend to film at this pace, they've always respected that as well. It's been a very happy harmonious union really.
When do you know a sketch is finished?
Walliams: We keep writing in the rehearsal room and when we're filming. On the recording nights, if I'm not in a sketch with Matt, or vice versa, we watch to suggest little lines and such if there's a dead moment in the sketch. We never really stop writing until the show is finished. Right now, we're still re-writing Tom [Baker]'s voiceovers…
The good thing about sketch shows is that there will always be trial and error. There are sketches we filmed that didn't turn out very funny, but we don't have to use them because we shot a bit more stuff. No one really knows. We have script conferences where we'd read things out. Some would get laughs and some wouldn't, but no one in that room knows for sure what is going to go great and what is going to go bad. You still have to put it out there in front of an audience. We like that process as well -- doing recordings in front of an audience -- because they really tell you when things are working or when they're not. And you edit around what they tell you.