Remakes of Comedies as Dramas

Cafe Society
1

Most remakes (all that I can think of, with one exception) are remakes of dramas as dramas, or remakes of dramas as comedies.

Have there been any remakes of comedies as dramas?

I am aware of the series “The Brady’s” which tried to tell stories about the family from The Brady Bunch as drama instead of comedy.

Any others, though? Hopefully better attempts?

Today I was thinking it would be fun to rewrite some old comedies as dramas. The Honeymooners, Hogan’s Heroes, My Favorite Martian, are the three that come to mind.

I was even thinking F-Troop could be done sort of this way, though it would have to be a story along the lines of Catch-22 or something like that, so that would be a sort of dark comedy, rather than a straight drama. But I mean to include the possibility of dark comedy in the kind of drama I’m thinking of. I mean, that’s basically what you get when you combine the absurdity of a sitcom premise with any attempt at serious plotting.

Has something like this ever been done? Successfully?

-FrL-

2

Trapper John, MD. Trapper from MASH becomes annoying Pernell Roberts.

3

This isn’t quite the same thing, but the character of Lou Grant went from the comedy program The Mary Tyler Moore Show to the drama program Lou Grant.

4

I kinda get the impression that people who watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer weren’t tuning in in the hope that they’d be treated to more PeeWee Herman dying in an alley.

5

And… that’s a whoosh.

What’s the story behind your comment?

-FrL-

6

Hogan’s Heroes was essentially a comic remake of
Stalag 17 , a drama with comedic moments.

Tim Burton’s Batman was arguably a less-comedic remake of Adam West’s.

Mayberry RFD was intended as a continuation of The Andy Griffith Show. IMDB calls it a comedy, but I remember differently.

7

That’s an interesting idea. When I was a kid, I remember people around me thinking of Burton’s Batman as being in some way a complete rejection of the TV series. But come to think of it, many of the TV series’ elements are there in Burton’s film.

But I never followed the comics, so I don’t know what to chalk up to the Batman mythos in general and what to chalk up to the series, if anything.

-FrL-

8

The referenced scene was in the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Paul Rubens played one of the vampires, and he spent…probably about 5 miniutes, total, dying after he got staked. Really over-acted.

The TV series wasn’t nearly that ridiculous. (Which is part of why Joss wanted to do the series - the movie was yanked rather further along the ‘silly’ axis than he’d wanted.)