Time for a can of superstrength lager and a slurred but celebratory sing-along: midway through its (current) ninth season, the US remake of Shameless hit the milestone of 100 episodes. There may still be some ground to make up on Paul Abbot’s trail-blazing UK original, which ran for 11 series on Channel 4 until 2013, but for a Chicago-set relocation of a riotous family saga so emphatically rooted on a Manchester council estate, it is still an impressive innings (or “inning”, as they say in baseball).

The wretched history of US remakes of UK TV shows and vice versa is littered with ill-conceived or half-baked efforts, although that has never seemed to discourage executives on either side of the Atlantic. While streaming services with global reach may signal the end of such optimistic TV recycling – will anyone attempt to redo Bodyguard when the original becomes available globally on Netflix later this month? – for now, there are still a handful of successful remakes that, as with Shameless, have matched or even surpassed the quality of the source material.

The Office (NBC)

Steve Carrell in The Office. Photograph: Rex Features

Or The Office: An American Workplace as it was originally titled to help differentiate the Steve Carell-led version from Ricky Gervais’ short but bittersweet BBC original. At first, the US do-over seemed like an unwieldy, find-and-replace rehash of the original scripts (look, a stapler in jello rather than jelly!), but slowly found its own rhythms of warmth and wit with the help of a large and increasingly likable cast. It may have overstayed its welcome after Carell’s departure in season six, but by then The Office US had diverged enough from the source to stand alone as a slightly crumpled monument to the exasperating trials and minor victories of kettled nine-to-fivers.

The Upper Hand (ITV)

Joe McGann and Diana Weston in series seven of The Upper Hand. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

Viewed nearly three decades on, ITV’s remake of US sitcom hit Who’s the Boss? feels like a soft-furnished manifestation of 90s New Man culture, with the hunky widowed ex-footballer Joe McGann agreeing to become housekeeper for affluent ad exec Diana Weston to achieve some stability for his daughter. At a time when Who’s the Boss? had zero UK profile, The Upper Hand had nothing to live up to, and even improved the recipe by adding the mischievous Honor Blackman as a man-eating grandmother. Most impressively, it did what US execs never dared do for fear of ruining the lucrative prospect of syndication: it married off its will-they-won’t-they? leads and allowed them a final series as man and wife.

House of Cards (Netflix)

House Of Cards Season five – a final twist even the stars didn’t see coming. Photograph: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

The “Netflix Original” (first seen in early 2013) was, of course, a remake; an expanded and overhauled version of the stiletto-sharp BBC series that had briskly concluded its diabolical business in three majestic arcs (just 12 episodes in total). House of Cards version 2.0 lifted the central monster, a lethal political operator with the disconcerting habit of sharing his cold-blooded schemes directly with the viewer, and built out its Washington DC cast and storylines to initially impressive but eventually wheel-spinning effect. It took a twist that even the Francis Urquhart might not have foreseen – the disgrace of its original star and producer – to push the sixth and final season, released next month, into uncharted territory.

The Apprentice (BBC)

Alan Sugar and some apprentices in series 13 of the show. Photograph: Freemantle Media/BBC

After serving as an unwelcome booster rocket for the Trump presidency, the US version of The Apprentice attempted to reboot last year without its rambling, self-absorbed star by replacing him with Arnold Schwarzenegger. After one season of desultory ratings, that move essentially deactivated the franchise in its home country, a sorry state of affairs that viewers in the UK may ponder with something approaching jealousy. Here, The Apprentice is still very much a going and growing concern, a seemingly endless amorality play starring idiots who could plausibly be outsmarted by their own rolling luggage, constructed in the image of a finger-jabbing boardroom barrow boy who, after 14 seasons, still vaguely resembles Sid James rolled in iron filings. Long may it reign.

Sanford and Son (NBC)

Sanford and Son. Photograph: NBC/NBC via Getty Images

Like Shameless, Steptoe and Son seems so rooted in a certain milieu of perpetually depressed Britishness – father-and-son rag-and-bone men constantly at each other’s throats against the scraggly backdrop of Shepherd’s Bush – that any attempt to re-create the original Galton and Simpson magic in sunny Los Angeles should have seemed doomed to failure. But the 1970s US remake recast its leads as black scrap dealers, pitting them against everyday racism as well as each other, and in doing so opened up sociopolitical territory unexplored by the original. Sanford and Son remains a touchstone for sitcoms that examine the black experience (and wisely replaced Ron Grainer’s deathless but doofus clip-clop theme for a Quincy Jones harmonica freak-out).

Geordie Shore (MTV UK)

Geordie Shore at the start of series 13. Photograph: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images

When Jersey Shore launched on MTV in 2009, it was a sensation: a staged reality show about horny and extremely tanned Italian-Americans that transformed a parade of implausible sobriquets – Nicole “Snooki” LaValle, Jenni “JWoww” Farley, Mike “the Situation” Sorrentino – into household nicknames. Jersey Shore burned through the zeitgeist bright and fast, wrapping things up after four rapid-fire seasons before a semi-successful reunion reboot last year. Meanwhile, the Newcastle-set UK spin-off Geordie Shore has quietly – or not-so-quietly, judging by recent trailers promoting a mob-handed trip to Oz – racked up 17 seasons since 2011, a true northern powerhouse.