Fox announced today that it will be shooting a pilot for a remake of popular BBC detective show Luther. The show’s creator Neil Cross is on board to write the adaptation, and star Idris Elba is serving as an executive producer (though is not currently attached to play the role again). This sounds like good news to fans of the original, whose three seasons aired in the States on BBC America and were met with some success and a handful of Emmy nominations. However you shouldn’t get your hopes up too soon.

Fox could use some good news like this announcement. They’re in the middle of a disastrous season. Of their new shows, the only hit is Batman-without-Batman drama Gotham (though sick kids dramedy Red Band Society does pretty well when DVR playbacks are considered). It had a high-profile misfire with the excellent-but-little-watched reality show Utopia. Its juggernaut American Idol has slowly been chugging to a halt and even last year’s hits like Sleepy Hollow aren’t performing nearly as well as they once did.

But most salient to this argument is Gracepoint, Fox’s remake of the British blockbuster Broadchurch. Gracepoint has the original writer of Broadchurch (at least for the pilot episode) and David Tennant, the original star. However, it failed to capture the magic of its predecessor. It’s also averaged an anemic three to four million viewers per episode. The only reasons Gracepoint has escaped cancellation is because Fox only made a 12-episode commitment to it (seven have aired already) and they have no other hits to speak of.

In light of all this, it’s staggering that Fox wants to remake Luther so soon after this failure. American remakes of shows from across the pond are already a dicey proposition. For every The Office there is a Coupling. For every American Idol there is a Weakest Link. But Broadchurch and Luther have pretty much the same story: they were both huge in their home country, they both aired on BBC America to some fanfare, they are both very recent series, and they’re both about moody but brilliant detectives solving crimes. Why would one fail and the other succeed?

Maybe it’s time for the networks to try something different. Maybe it’s time for them to, I don’t know, just import the British show and air it as is. There have been so many English dramas that have failed over the past several years (Prime Suspect and Life on Mars come immediately to mind) when there have been several huge successes that have been imported, namely Downton Abbey, Sherlock and Doctor Who – which is about as old as my great aunt Fanny, but is experiencing a surge in American popularity like it’s never seen before.

How do you explain those show’s success where so many remakes have failed? I have always said that the reason Downton was so successful in America (the excellent writing of the first season aside) was that there was an American, Lady Cora, central to the plot. Not only that, but she was the rich savior of the very estate that we were invested in, the unsung hero of Downton. This gives viewers a new universe to inhabit, which is what all good television does.

Once the locations and accents have been changed, most of these remakes end up boiling down to more American cops solving more American crimes. With all the SVUs, NCISs and other alphabet procedurals, being based on a BBC show is hardly enough to differentiate any of them from the pack. Gracepoint and Luther are both rooted in their place and time, which is what makes them such great programs. That is not easily replicated by finding similar locations in America and actors with similar features.

Just look at Gracepoint. It has most of the creative team of the original, so it’s not the material people aren’t connecting to, it’s something that is lost in the iteration. It’s like trying to rewrite an important email after you accidentally hit “delete draft”. Hunting for that special ingredient is only going to ensure that you don’t find it a second time.

So, why don’t we just import more shows and put them on network TV? Well, partly it’s economics. If Fox just rented Broadchurch it would only make money by selling advertising against it. If it remakes it, it can own the product, thereby licensing it to Netflix or other secondary markets, including DVDs, downloads and sales to foreign markets. Of course, that only works if the show is a smash.

Also, as I stated with Downton, audiences do like to be able to identify with the people and places they watch on TV, so it makes sense to transport these dramas – but they so rarely survive the journey.

Why doesn’t Fox, who at this point has to be a little bit desperate, try something new and revolutionary? Maybe it’s time to take a gamble on an import and see if you can get a runaway hit like Downton. It sure has to be better than repeating sins of the past and hoping for a different outcome.