There are many great American remakes of British TV: “American Idol,” “The Office,” “What Not to Wear,” “The Weakest Link.” There are also many great TV shows about life in Hollywood: “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” “Entourage,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (sort of). The 2011 winter television premieres, however, have not been good to either genre, between MTV’s salacious and sloppy “Skins” and Showtime’s casual attempt at comedy with “Episodes.” The two, in their striking divergences and surprising similarities, present a great question about American audiences and their sensibilities when it comes to humor, sex, celebrity and action in their television shows.

“Episodes” is not itself a remake but is a show about the remake process. In the pilot, we meet married television writers Beverly and Sean Lincoln and watch them, metaphorically in the opening credits and literally in the body of the episode, relocate to L.A. when a Hollywood network executive options their award-winning British comedy series, “Lyman’s Boys,” for remake. This dry description of the premise is indicative of the plot content of the episode and the protagonists themselves, both of which are boring and plain. Much as I was enticed by the idea of satirizing Hollywood from the writer’s point of view, the show exhibits dry, anemic satire instead of biting humor. David Crane, the co-creator of “Friends,” is co-creator once again, but he loses what was good about “Friends” and seems to gain a complex about the success that came from that goodness.

In other words, the show ostensibly wants to make fun of Hollywood opulence, arbitrariness and anti-intellectualism but, in doing so, allows those destructive entities to pervade the make-up of the show itself. The result is a sluggishly paced 25 minutes that rely on the same punch-line pattern and audience expectation. With the latter, the dialogue can be successful when self-aware: in the second episode, Matt LeBlanc confronts the Lincolns about the similarity of their show to the play, “The History Boys,” whose lead actor, Richard Griffiths, is also the lead actor of “Lyman’s Boys.” When the show pursues the details of meta-humor to that degree, it finds success; otherwise, the jokes feel recycled.

I admit that I myself am not partial to British comedies such as “Coupling,” but I’m all the more surprised that the creator of the most popular and most determinedly American comedy series of all time can’t bridge the gap between American and British humor. That may be the show’s biggest problem: its decision to separate the British and the American a la the Revolutionary War (this time pitting the Hollywood beautiful against the overly cerebral British), when we want to see a more nuanced story about the interaction of the two cultures.

This, too, seems to be the problem of MTV’s highly anticipated reboot of “Skins.” A devotee of the British version since last fall, I love the original series because I can appreciate the thematic issues it raises but still recognize that this would never happen in my own life. The nightclubs, the drugs, the religious and ethnic clashes, the class strife: all of these are germane to the human condition, but not to the everyday existence of the majority of American teens watching MTV.

The adaptation of the immensely powerful and artistically stunning British original functions on the notion that American viewers demand both what is familiar and what is outrageous. In watering down the overall tone of the show but still milking, in terms of marketing at least, the scandal of nudity and withdrawn investors, the content of the episodes is rendered frivolous. Frivolity, excess and sexuality are not foreign to American audiences; who can forget Gossip Girl’s genius “OMFG” advertising campaign that made an event of every episode? For “Skins,” the show’s roots in a profound commentary on British culture that transcends the target age group paint the newest iteration as exploitative.

American television, when it comes to shows that deviate from the safe, universally palatable sitcoms, falls into two categories: programs, most often on cable, that use a frame of a time period (“Boardwalk Empire”), a profession (“Breaking Bad”) or a narrative device (“Damages”) to distinguish themselves from reality, and in so doing, make their messages universal; and programs, most often on network TV, that use punctuated episodes of scandal, drama or intrigue to attract viewers but keep them at a distance from the material itself. Isn’t this, after all, the foundation of serialized shows such as “CSI,” “Law and Order,” “NCIS” and “90210” alike?

The accidental nature of the Lincolns’ success on “Episodes” represents the way good television is made, in my opinion. Immersion in the art yields a story with a brain and heart that can sustain the life form of a TV show for many seasons. When the premise or plot of a show is constantly reacting to what audiences want, it fails to anticipate what they need.