All remakes are not equal. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 “Psycho”? Classic. Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake? Poor taxidermy.

The more something is loved, the taller the order it is to repackage it. The American version of “The Office” was a hard sell for me in 2005. How could you possible beat England’s completed 14 episodes — Ricky Gervais’s David Brent, as the paunchy, deluded boss; his ex-Territorial Army assistant Gareth (the desperately wonderful Mackenzie Crook), who kept his cell phone in a gun holster; and Tim and Dawn, entry-level recent grads sinking into the humility of realizing they’ve become a career paper salesman and receptionist, respectively. In the American version, almost everyone seemed just slightly too likable and better looking. But that wore off as quickly as the sugar buzz from an office ice cream social and the bunch in Scranton was quickly just as unsatisfied or horrifying as their counterparts in Slough.

The old black-and-white version of “Clerks,” from 1994, is far-and-away considered a better piece of cinema than mostly anything else Kevin Smith’s made. But I prefer the utterly panned “Clerks: The Animated Series,” which ABC canceled after six episodes in 2001 were finished and two aired — in the wrong order. Faced with a different set of confines — no swearing allowed, but since it’s animated, an episode can travel from the jungle to a high-rise in five minutes — the cartoon could by design have very little in common with the original movie, except for the sensibility. That translates, from one “Office” to the other and from one “Clerks” to the other.

And while the American version of “Kath & Kim,” adapted from the Australian series, has been canceled after one season, its two-disc history is plenty worthy and entertaining on its own as well.

True, it’s slightly harder at first to feel sorry for Molly Shannon, as mom Kath, and Selma Blair, as daughter Kim, compared to the Australian version, whose Kath & Kim aren’t quite size 2s and whose style seems un-ironically stuck in the ’80s, with bad sequined sweaters and hair that looks like the aftermath of an electrical hiccup. The American house isn’t quite as trashy and cluttered as the Australian house. The American Kim pulls off her too-big, too-fluffy scuff-around-the-house slippers, while the Australian Kim, in mid-calf, cheap purple polyesther fur booties, looks especially sad. Kim doesn’t have a baby as she does in the Australian version, and her best friend is a cute bimbo instead of a big, dull potato.

What makes the American version work is how pitiful and dumb and filled with passionate intensity are Central Floridians Shannon, Blair and especially John Michael Higgins. Kim has run home (from an apartment on “Gloria Estefan Parkway”) after discovering her new marriage requires work, just as her mother Kath, a hairdresser, is being swept off her feet by area sandwich magnate Higgins, as the formerly morbidly obese Phil Knight, who’s remade himself as a secular, power-walking (ridiculously shimmying in tiny shorts as he does so) Ned Flanders.

Even as mother and daughter renew their bonds over powdered sangria (made with canned peaches) and celebrity gossip (they call a week in which Suri Cruise gets a new haircut a busy news week), mom’s happy relationship bumps into her daughter’s unhappy one daily.

“If I walk out this door, you’ll never see me again,” Kim’s estranged (or “in stranged” as she says) husband threatens in Kath’s kitchen. “Yes I will,” Kim retorts. “It’s a glass door.” (Kim’s husband, incidentally, spent his stimulus check from President Bush to go to Epcot.) After Kath picks up the phone and reacts giddily to find she’s been accepted to style hair at a fancy event at the mall, she gets off and sees her daughter, unresponsive, not having intuited what was obviously happening on the phone: “Well, I only heard your half of the conversation!” Kim says. In another episode, after about a dozen in which Phil’s Sandwich Island is referred to as “The Island,” Kim interrupts him to say, truly perplexed, “What’s ‘The Island’?”

Their dialog is tortured — the kind of lines people on reality television would say without writers. There are lines like “she has all these more feelings than me.” These are the kind of people who are won over in equal parts by the Kardashians, Sarah Palin and “appeteasers.” They are as wonderfully off-key as all the non-central characters Larry David grins, bears and ultimately insults and has to win back in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Yes, it would have been nice for everyone not to look so clean and toned in the American version, for the characters who eat nothing but Applebee’s Chocolate Meltdowns and Doritos to actually look like it. Maybe America really longs for the cruel, hard slap in the face the Australian version is — or maybe we’re not ready for such introspection, even in parody.

Ashley O’Dell reviews movies (and other things) that aren’t in theaters anymore — and sometimes never were.