Voicing Primetime: The “Doctor Who” Effect

Two breakout stars from the UK sci-fi favorite get their own US shows. But they've lost something in the translation: their voices.

In "My Fair Lady," the Lerner and Loewe musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s "Pygmalion," pompous proper Brit Henry Higgins gives Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle diction lessons — making her repeatedly say (and then sing, of course) "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain."

In "Selfie," the new ABC rom-com sitcom that got off to a promising start Tuesday, modern day marketing whiz Henry Higgs tries to transform self-absorbed social media over-sharer Eliza Dooley into a more analogue, sociable human.

But he doesn't mess much with her speaking voice — that's already been done for him.

Karen Gillan sparks a luminosity in Eliza as she did as Amy Pond in "Doctor Who." Her new show arrives the same week as her fellow "Who" breakout star and Scotland native David Tennant debuts in Fox's "Gracepoint," an America remake of his ongoing British crime drama “Broadchurch.”

In both ventures, though, something got lost in the translation: the actors' voices — or, more specifically, their accents. The two attractive performers have fallen victim to ugly Americanism.

Foreign accents and U.S. primetime TV don’t have a history of mixing well. In the 1950s, Desi Arnaz’ Cuban accent became fodder for jokes on “I Love Lucy.” Both “All in the Family” and “Sanford and Son” were remakes of 1960s British shows deemed unfit for U.S. viewers. For years, PBS, home to “Masterpiece Theater” and “Monty Python,” stood pretty much as the only place with room for voices other than American.

That’s changed as the world — particularly the TV entertainment world — has become more connected, thanks largely to digital technology. “Doctor Who” is a big draw all over, as is “Downton Abbey.”

Tongues are loosening a bit on U.S. network TV. The reimagined Sherlock Holmes of “Elementary” is a Brit. The delightfully quirky NBC sitcom “Welcome to Sweden” features Swedish natives and even occasional subtitles. Catherine Tate, another “Doctor Who” alum, kept her British accent when she joined the American version of “The Office” for much of the final two seasons.

There certainly are times when fine actors from abroad need to adapt their voices to the part — take Irdis Elba and Dominic West in “The Wire,” and, more recently, Stephen Graham’s explosive turn as the mercurial Al Capone on “Boardwalk Empire.” But what was the point of having Hugh Laurie adopt American speech patterns for “House”? His character might have proved even more cutting as a son of Cambridge University.

In the case of “Gracepoint,” perhaps Fox just should have snatched up the second series of “Broadchurch,” a show introduced on these shores by BBC America. As for “Selfie,” making Eliza a UK transplant could have added resonance to her backstory as an outsider who used social media to become what she thought was a glamorous insider.   

Nobody wants to pigeonhole strong actors. But it’s time for more TV executives to give audiences some credit, and learn a lesson from “Pygmalion”/”My Fair Lady”: The way a person speaks is no basis to keep them down.

Jere Hester is founding director of the award-winning, multi-media NYCity News Service at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. He is also the author of "Raising a Beatle Baby: How John, Paul, George and Ringo Helped us Come Together as a Family." Follow him on Twitter.

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