One of the occupational hazards of doing the Stream It Or Skip It column is that we tend to forget about shows we reviewed, then stopped watching, in past years. So when we reviewed the French comedy Shafted in January, we had no idea that it was a remake of the Spanish comedy Alpha Males, which we reviewed in December of 2022 and promptly forgot about. But when we hit play on the new Dutch comedy Roosters, the first scene was instantly recognizable. Why? Because it was the same first scene as Shafted! This sent us down a Google rabbit hole that revealed to us that both Roosters and Shafted are remakes of Alpha Males.
Opening Shot: Four men speak up at a seminar that at first feels like it’s from a 12-step program, and they all say “I’m a sexist.” Well, two of them do. One says, “apparently I’m a sexist” The fourth one walks out.
The Gist: The four friends — Ivo (Benja Bruijning),Danny (Waldemar Torenstra), Mike (Jeroen Spitzenberger) and Greg (André Dongelmans) — are at a seminar about “throwing off the shield of toxic masculinity”, and they’re all there reluctantly (though Ivo takes notes).
Three months earlier, Mike walks into his job as head of content for a cable network when his boss tells him that he’s being replaced; the new programmer is a woman, in the CEO’s hope that the network appeals to a younger, less male demographic. Also, he’s been thrown under the bus for the failure of a show called Fuck Island. He tells his girlfriend Stevie (Eva Laurenssen) that he quit. In order to help pay for their new huge house, Stevie decides to become a social media influencer.
Ivo walks into his flat to find that his teenage daughter Tess has decided to move in with him, leaving his ex Desiree (Fockeline Ouwerkerk) furious. She then proceeds to set her single dad up on Tinder.
Danny breaks up with his married sex buddy in order to ask his girlfriend Pam (Jennifer Hoffman) to marry him; he’s about to surprise her with the ring in some lava cake, when she proposes they have an open relationship. On the other end of the spectrum, Greg’s wife Merel (Jelka van Houten) is completely unsatisfied with his lack of sex drive and when Luis tries to bring toys into the bedroom, it doesn’t go well.
All of the men’s issues with the women in their lives come to a head during a dinner party at Mike’s house, which is also where Tess told Ivo’s Tinder date to meet him. Let’s just say she was greeted with a lot of yelling about sex and a man not ready to go out on a date.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Roosters is a remake of the 2022 Spanish comedy Alpha Males. Do you know what else was a remake of Alpha Males? The French comedy Shafted, which we reviewed in January.
Our Take: We’re not sure what the impetus was to create new versions of a comedy about men who are trying to assert their masculinity in the face of the strong women in their lives and the ever-changing status of gender roles in the 21st century, but the fact that two have dropped on Netflix in a month shows that the original Alpha Males touched a nerve.
For Roosters, we did a cut-and-paste of our “Gist” section from the Alpha Males review because it essentially copies the Spanish original scene-for-scene, while Shafted made a number of changes. Looking back at our review of Alpha Males, we liked the fact that these guys were getting comeuppance and that, while they thought they may have had the upper hand on their relationships with the strong women in their lives, their mates have had their numbers from the start. That dynamic comes into play in Roosters, which was written by Luuk van Bemmelen, Richard Kemper.
We didn’t like Shafted because the characters there seemed jerkier and more pathetic. What Roosters seems to get right is the same thing the original series did: These guys may think they’re alpha males, but they never were to begin with, and they’re finally being shown why.
By the way, as with the Spanish original, the funniest scene in the Dutch version is when Greg and Merel are called to their son’s school and presented with the vibrating butt plug they tried to use the night before, with Merel upbraiding their son’s young and single teacher for judging them.
Sex and Skin: Less nudity than in the other two versions.
Parting Shot: After the dinner party disaster, the four men sit by Mike’s pool. Danny jumps in with his clothes on, thinking the other three will follow suit. Not only does he realize that the pool isn’t heated, he’s also annoyed when his friends just shake their heads and go inside. (FYI, we cut and pasted this from the Alpha Males review, too.)
Sleeper Star: Jelka van Houten has the most physical comedy in the episode, walking around with the vibrator in her tush in order to put her kids to bed, then drunkenly demanding sex from Greg during the dinner party.
Most Pilot-y Line: Not sure why we haven’t realized this before, but the Dutch word for “fuck” is “fuck.” Probably because we heard about two dozen f-bombs in the span of the 30-minute first episode.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Like Alpha Males, Roosters gave us just enough laughs to keep us watching, and we were happy to see that the men in this version were less pathetic, but just as silly, as the men from Shafted.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.