Watching /Three’s Company back in the day, I always thought two things: A) Joyce DeWitt was about fifteen times hotter than Suzanne Somers (though DeWitt and Priscilla Barnes were about equal) and ii) Janet and Jack had a serious thing for one another, but didn’t pursue it because she thought it was unwise giving their living arrangements. In other words, Misters Roper and Furley’s fears of rampant sexual debauchery in that little apartment were not unfounded.
Which gets me to thinking. What with the current proopensity for rebooting old TV shows and movies, surely somebody has thought of doing a TC remake. Could such a show work – aired on a broadcast or basic cable network, not HBO or Starz or the like – work with such a change in the premise? That is, Janet is in fact the lover of both Jack and the blonde of the season and cannot choose between them, so they establish a shared household? (Just that permutation, though. I don’t care for three-ways.)
Are they going to get a third bedroom? Seems unfair otherwise.
I don’t really see where the humor comes from. Product of its time as it was, part of the Three’s Company humor came from the “Jack’s pretending to be gay” angle. What sort of humor comes from the new dynamic? Sounds more like a wearisome drama than a sit com to me.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of a landlord who gives a rat about unmarried couples living together, which was part and parcel of the original premise. It is not a thing I’d think would really work in this day and age… without feeling awfully contrived.
Not really comparable. The new Galactica was the kind of show that the original was trying to be: A grim space adventure. Yes, the original failed horribly in that, and ended up being a campy over-the-top parody of itself, but it was still trying to be serious. The original Three’s Company, though, never tried to be anything other than what it was.
Somewhere I can see a French farce coming out of this. The only problem is, French farce generally doesn’t make a good platform for a sitcom. An episode every now and then (see Frasier) but not the entire story.
What if we contrive a reason that they must convince everybody else that they are in a hot menage a trois, when they in fact greatly detest each other?
You’d be better off trying to reboot Bosom Buddies as the story of two men who get an apartment in a women-only building by posing as transgender women. If you could survive having your studio burned to the ground by the LGBTQ community, that is.
I can’t see why a landlord would object to the living arrangements, or why onew of them would pretend to be gay as an explanation.
You’d need to have some completely different secret and dynamic to make it believable. Like maybe one of the roommates is an extraterrestrial. Or a Serial Killer, or something.
I think it could work if you kept the menage a secret from the landlord. Just make him an old, traditional guy like Mr Furley who rents out the apartment but doesn’t like to see that kind of stuff going on. As progressive as we are now, most people still pair up, an open relationship like that is not common and I can see Jack trying to still hide his relationship from the landlord.
My Two Dads combined with Dexter and/or The X-Files, with a little bit of Family Ties gone really bad thrown in.
It would only work if it starred Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, and Lucy Lawless, with a rotating roster of has-been 'Eighties sitcom and teen horror movie stars being killed off every episode only to reappear again in the guise of a totally differnent character.
I’m not even convinced the setup worked on the original show. It had ONE plotline, repeated every week. Someone hears something, causing them to have a misunderstanding/incorrect assumption about other characters. The misunderstanding is cleared up; roll credits.
The only reason it ran more than three episodes is that audiences back then enjoyed the titillation. Today, I can’t imagine audiences would give a rat’s ass.
You got that right. Not even close to the same show.
OTOH, Chronos has a point, too. There was no point in re-using the name for that, either.
ETA:
But that undercuts your point.* If a new TC is an entirely different show, that makes it analagous to Battlestar Galactica transitioning from campy parody to grim space adventure.
*your first point. Personally, I’m all about campy o-t-t parody.
Jack is living with – and secretly banging – Janet. Janet insists that Chrissy wouldn’t stand for that, so Jack agrees to pretend to be gay when Chrissy is around. Note that Jack is also secretly banging Chrissy, who insists that Janet wouldn’t stand for that, such that he has to pretend to be gay when Janet is around. So he only ever puts on the ‘gay’ act when all three of them are there.
