Back in the eighties someone in TV land bought into the idea that Emma Thompson is a young up and coming star, with a wide range of abilities & brains. So, they reasoned, lets push the boat out and give her a TV series. The show as I remember it was a mix of comedy, dance and singing. However, getting her own series brought out the very worst in Thompson, encouraging a lack of internal self-censorship about what were good ideas and what were bad. Many of her comedy sketches are bafflingly unfunny, ironically the title sequence where she does this little spin and then turns her body into a T shape (ie 't' for Thompson), as if to say 'Look Mum, I can do anything', is the height of unintentional comedy. When this programme came out in the UK there were only four TV channels, so programmes then came under a great amount of scrutiny. The general verdict at the time, was 'I can't believe anything so bad could be made by the BBC', and 'What an awful conceited person she is'. Since then many in the UK have held a grudge against the programme and Emma. In the US where such connections are lost, I guess it was just seen as more of an exotic, off-beat piece of whimsy from Europe and people could just take or leave it.
