Creativity must be in very short supply over at NBC (Now Broadcasting Crap) because they seem to feel that the way to garner an audience is to reboot successful TV shows from the 1970s and 1980s. Sadly, this thought process is doomed to failure.
Recently, NBC rebooted the Raymond Burr TV series, Ironside. The rebooted series starred Blair Underwood literally as a Rambo type character in a wheelchair and was set in New York. It was cancelled on 18 October, 2013 due to low ratings after fewer than 10 episodes. While I’m sure the fact that many NBC executives were surprised by the low viewer numbers, this was not a surprise to me and was something I predicted back in June.
However, the network that rebooted iconic series like the Munsters, Knight Rider and the Bionic Woman, refuses to learn from its failures. NBC announced that it will reboot Remington Steele as a half hour comedy and Murder, She Wrote. This announcement begs the same question I asked with the Ironside re-launch news. Why?
The Remington Steele reboot promises “…hilarious, action-packed, romantic entanglements….” Forgive me for not believing that the hour long romantic, detective drama series that launched the careers of Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist can be magically and easily translated into 24 minutes of “fun.”
The Murder, She Wrote reboot takes the character of Jessica Fletcher (a retired English teacher who, after being widowed in her early fifties, becomes a very successful mystery writer) and turns her in to a hospital administrator with a self-published novel. Set to star Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, the re-launched series is supposed to be in the vein of Bones or Fargo, but sounds more like Diagnosis: Murder, which I’m sure is next on the NBC reboot list.
Sadly, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the rebooted Murder, She Wrote and Remington Steele will meet the same fate as the re-launched Ironside – cancellation. If NBC is serious about rebooting past TV shows, they should follow the example of Gene Roddenberry when he re-launched Star Trek as Star Trek: The Next Generation. His reboot formula brought viewers familiar with the old series together with new viewers ultimately launching 3 additional (and successful) franchises: Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. NBC could learn a lot from following this model.
You know my opinion on the “Remington Steele” reboot. And I had only just heard about the “Murder, She Wrote” reboot and it ticking off Angela Lansbury. (FYI, Zimbalist and Gleason (RS creator) weren’t all that thrilled to hear about the RS re-do.)
The “need” of networks/studios to take EVERYTHING and remake it is perplexing. I’m sure there are thousands of writers/producers/directors out there who’d love to get something original of their own making out to the world.
And while it’s just fine for us nobody-fans to hang out on Fanfiction.net, it’s pathetic that the Big Boys are also into what essentially is alternate-universe fanfic.
Completely agree. It seems that originality gets punished in TV land, thus we get flooded with vampire, talent shows and law and order programs because “it’s been done before.” Thanks for reading…