BOOTLEG FILES 646: “Beane’s of Boston” (1979 CBS television pilot based on the BBC series “Are You Being Served?”).

LAST SEEN: It is on YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: A one-shot failure.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Nope.

Beginning in the early 1970s, American television producers began to eyeball long-running British series with the hope that they could transplant those offerings into new Americanized versions. A few of those efforts paid off brilliantly: Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin reworked “Till Death Us Do Part” as “All in the Family” and “Steptoe and Son” was Americanized as “Sanford and Son,” while ABC took “Man About the House” and turned it into “Three’s Company.”
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