Can someone help out the 'FlashForward' actors with their American accents?

Look, I'm no linguist. But if there's one thing that annoys me more than anything on TV and in the movies, it's when a non-native speaker of American English tries to mimic our accent and fails miserably. Whether it's the Southern drawl or the East Coast Bostonian or the surfer-slack Californian. To be fair, the opposite is true, too: Madonna, stop with the faux English accent already! You're from Michigan! (Gwyneth Paltrow does a fantastic British accent. Take pointers from her.) One of my new favorite shows, ABC's FlashForward, which takes place in L.A., features some actors who are absolutely butchering American accents. And it's hurting the show, because it's just distractingly bad form. Repeat offenders include lead actor Joseph Fiennes, who's a Brit, and supporting actor Brían F. O'Byrne, an Irishman who seems to be struggling not to sound like a gruff Michael Flatley at every turn. (That's Fiennes and O'Byrne chatting in the clip above.) On a happier note, supporting actor Sonya Walger—an Englishwoman, who actually plays one on ABC's Lost—appears to have taken the right America pills. Her accent is spot on. Go, Sonya! Attention, FlashForward speech coaches: Help your actors out.

—Posted by Will Levith