Ten Percent, the British adaptation of Call My Agent!, is soon to hit Amazon Prime Video, and the cast and crew have been discussing what it’s like remaking such a beloved comedy.
Both shows focus on the personal and professional lives of a group of talent agents, whose clients are portrayed by real life celebrities playing themselves.
Speaking exclusively with RadioTimes.com, the show’s writer John Morton, who’s known for creating hit comedies W1A and Twenty Twelve, said that he was a fan of the French show already, making the prospect of remaking it “very exciting” but also “very daunting”.
“You feel a big responsibility immediately to it, and to the people that like it,” Morton continued. “But I do think that even if I hadn’t seen the French show, even if it didn’t exist, it’s an interesting world to be in, the world of what agents do.”
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Meanwhile, in another exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com, Lydia Leonard and Prasanna Puwanarajah, who play agents Rebecca and Dan respectively in Ten Percent, agreed that the prospect of remaking the show was daunting, with Leonard admitting that she stopped watching it after she was cast.
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She said: “I was kind of terrified and excited so I just put that to one side. I look forward to watching the rest of it because it was so brilliant and a really joyful springboard for our show, we were all big fans of the French one. But it does make you, I think personally, put a bit of extra pressure on oneself in order to maintain that standard to some degree.”
However, the pair acknowledged that the new series is not a direct remake and very much tells its own story. Puwanarajah said it was “immediately apparent from even the tiny bits of script that we got was that it was just kind of rhythmically and tonally its own thing and very much John’s flavour. So there was immediate divergence.”
Leonard agreed that “episode 1 starts very similarly in terms of plot and so you could be forgiven for thinking it’s going to be a direct remake. But then, immediately after that it diverges and becomes its own thing. It’s just so different to the French version because we are very different, the French are just cooler than us.”
“Whereas we’ve just got some flies buzzing around our heads, waiting for trains, things like that,” Puwanarajah joked. “So yeah, it’s basically a show of us waiting for trains.”
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Alongside Leonard and Puwanarajah the show stars Jack Davenport, Maggie Steed, Hiftu Quasem, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Rebecca Humphries, Harry Trevaldwyn and Jim Broadbent as the agents and assistants working at Nightingale Hart, a fictional London talent agency.
Meanwhile celebrities making guest appearances as themselves throughout the first season include Helena Bonham Carter, Dominic West and Himesh Patel.
All eight episodes of Ten Percent are arriving on Amazon Prime Video on 28th April 2022 – sign up for a Prime Video free trial.
You can also find something to watch with our TV Guide.
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