Resurrect a TV Show or Book Sequel

Cafe Society
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OK, the Magic Fairy Of Entertainment has visited you and decreed that you can resurrect a TV show, or have a sequel written (by the original author/starring the original cast, regardless of minor inconveniences like the fact they may be dead) to any book/TV show you like.

However, this Cultural Necromancy does have a few catches.

Firstly, Futurama and Firefly have already been resurrected, and there is a new, non-depressing Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book in the works, in which it turns out Mostly Harmless was an hallucination bought on by too many Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters, and is a comic return to the style of the first two books- a surefire bestseller, in other words.

Also, there are to be no more Lord Of The Rings or Star Wars books or TV spin-offs as part of this offer.

It does not include franchises which are still going, albeit with different authors (for example, the James Bond series of novels), nor does it include anything currently in production (so no, you can’t have them hurry up and finish the next season of My Name Is Earl so you can watch it tomorrow instead of in 2007) or on hiatus (Harvey Birdman, Attorney At Law, or Red Dwarf, for example.)

You can, however, use your Resurrection to get a series out of a Pilot that never went ahead, should the concept be sufficiently interesting and worthwhile, and you will be allowed some changes to ensure marketability (For example, you could have the Black Bart TV series based on Blazing Saddles, using the movie’s cast), but you can’t use it to create “Real Life” versions of shows-within-shows (so no Itchy & Scratchy, in other words).

Also, it does not include Movies. TV shows and Books only!

Aside from that, any TV show or book you like can be resurrected, and will be equal to (or better than) the previous shows/books.

For a TV show, I’d have Duckman resurrected. Anyone who’s seen the show knows how brilliant it is (Jason Alexander voices a yellow, ranting duck detective, who has a monotonic partner in the best traditions of buddy comedy and adult humour), and it only got 4 seasons before being cancelled. If there’s a show crying out for more episodes, it’s Duckman, IMO.

For a book, I’d like to see a sequel to David Brin’s The Postman. The book ended in such a way that suggested a sequel might be forthcoming in the future, but David Brin himself has said that won’t be happening. Still, with the power of Wishful Thinking, we can dream! :smiley:

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I’d bring back the cartoon version of “The Tick.”

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Angel. They went out on a high note, but the last season was clicking on so many levels. We need 4 or 5 more seasons of Angel…now!

But more Duckman would be nice… :smiley:

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The Associates was a well written series starring Martin Short, a hot blonde, and a plucky brunette as young lawyers, with Joe Regalbuto as a junior partner and their mentor. It was also well acted and basically intelligent. (sort of the Scrubs of the legal profession) So it needs 2 or 3 new seasons.

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It would be nice to have Mission: Impossible with modern effects (though we would either need a new cast or a magic fountain of youth.)

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Either Freaks & Geeks or Undeclared. Both died far too early.

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The series on AMC about a 1940s Radio station in Pittsburgh Remember WENN

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TV shows:

Arrested Development (of course)

Northern Exposure- this would be tricky, but I think with the proper handling it would work. You would need to introduce some new characters to replace Fleischman (who could not be believably brought back), Ruth Anne & Walt (who is dead IRL), Ed (who I always thought was the weakest link… goodbye!) and Maggie (no real reason to have her without Joel). I would still have Holling & Shelley (the most believable March-December romance ever on TV), Maurice & Barbara Semansky, their respective kids, the gay B&B owners, and the recurring roles (particularly Marilyn and the other native American castmembers). New characters- a new doctor could work, but much different from Joel, perhaps Chris’s brother as the town DJ, etc… It would take a lot of work, but it could be done.

The Prisoner- quickly, while Patrick McGoohan is still mobile enough to be in the first episode. (He’s actually not as old as I thought- he’s 78, but that’s an age that can mean yoga, 5 mile jog and jumping jacks before 6 am or gumming jello in a home.) I may or may not keep the original Welsh village, and I wouldn’t be so concerned with whether Number 6 is American, English, male, female, etc., so long as the scripts and acting are great. And I think Jon Stewart would make a great Number 2 for a couple of episodes.

For most of the shows I’d love to see brought back the actors are either too old or too dead, unfortunately.

Books I’d love to see a sequel to:

To Kill a Mockingbird (only if it could match or at least come near the original of course)- whatever happened to Scout and Dill and Jem? I’d set it from WW2 to the present.

Confederacy of Dunces- J.K. Toole being dead, I’d have to write it myself of course. :stuck_out_tongue: Ignatius arrives in NYC ca. 1964 and through a series of misadventures becomes the leader of a gang of hippies he detests, but he thrives on their worship. Gets involved with the mafia, a Hasidic messianicist and a 4 foot tall black drag queen. I’d call it Spur of Glory or something otherwise taken from a Swift quote (Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. )

Harry Potter Call me obsessive, but I think there should be another book in this series. Half Blood Prince left room for a sequel.

Gone With the Wind but NOT by a romance novelist. I really liked Pat Conroy’s take (his first sentence was “Outside of Atlanta nobody remembers my name, and there they only remember me for who my wife was once”) but of course he and the anal Mitchell heirs had major creative differences and it was scrapped.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe- nothing Fannie has written since has stood inside the same area code as this one. (The last one, Redbird Christmas or whatever, was positively saccharine.) There’s about 40 years missing from Idgie’s life and it encompasses the civil rights era through Reagan- I think it could work, especially giving her a new cast of characters to play off of.

The Bible- so what happened to these guys? Did Jesus ever come back? Did Paul ever come out? Did Peter finally spread the joys of kosher cooking to the new audience? Did the author of Revelations ever seek professional help? DON’T LEAVE US HANGING!

Of course a posting of Eve’s once suggesting a great artistic/religious sequel for Dan Brown called The Tom of Finland Code is one of the best ideas I’ve read for a sequel. Especially since it’s easy to look at those drawings and imagine something is pointing to a particular time or place on the compass.

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Parker Lewis Can’t lose.

Sorry, but I just loved this show when it came out. “Kubiac” went on to be an ER star, and well, the less said the better about the rest of the cast.

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I think it would be interesting to bring back Lou Grant. He was a sitcom second banana, then the star of a drama, and now I think he should combine the two and be the star of a sitcom about a retired reporter (Lou Grant) with a regular cast of characters (including his really hot grandsons who appear mostly nude in several episodes) and occasional visits from old friends (Sue Ann Nivins, Mary, Rhoda, etc.). In fact he could live in a Chicago retirement community where his neighbors include Bob and Emily Hartley (The Bob Newhart Show), Cliff Huxtable (whose wife Clair left him for a man half her age, we learn), Willona Woods and others. The manager of the complex is Queens-born breadwinner turned professor’s wife turned single mom turned college educated retirement community manager Gloria Bunker Stivic Evans Jefferson (she married George Jefferson when his wife and neighbors died).

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they actually did that in [url=http://imdb.com/title/tt0094511/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHE9bWlzc2lvbiBpbXBvc3NpYmxlfGZ0PTF8bXg9MjB8bG09NTAwfGNvPTF8aHRtbD0xfG5tPTE_;fc=5;ft=20;fm=1]1988[/del]- Peter Greaves ws still “boss” but the younger cast included Greg Morris’ son Phil. It wasn’t very good.

Wasn’t that book # 6? If so, there will be a 7th book, because Hogwarts is a 7 year school.

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damn coding gerbils

they actually did that in [1988](http://imdb.com/title/tt0094511/?fr=c2l0ZT1kZnx0dD0xfGZiPXV8cG49MHxrdz0xfHE9bWlzc2lvbiBpbXBvc3NpYmxlfGZ0PTF8bXg9MjB8bG09NTAwfGNvPTF8 aHRtbD0xfG5tPTE_;fc=5;ft=20;fm=1)- Peter Greaves ws still “boss” but the younger cast included Greg Morris’ son Phil. It wasn’t very good

She married JJ? JJ? I just don’t see it. and George? eewwww! Lionel, after his wife suddenly passed away maybe. After all, he’d have inherited the family fortune when George died of boredom (with his wife and neighbors dead, he had no one to pick on)

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Old Stuf:
Forbidden Planet – What if they’d got enough money to do a sequel, and it was good. I’d pay to see good 1940s-style space opera done in the 1950s. Nowadays you can’t help but think of Star Trek when you see this kind of thing, but if they’d done it before Roddenbery lifted the best parts and impressed his stamp on it all, what might have been done?
King Kong – they screwed over Cooper schoedsack, O’Brien, and the rest of the crew of the 1933 classic by giving them a pitiful fraction of the money (and virtually no time) to make a sequel to Kong, so they got no better than Son of Kong (In fact, it’s surprising they got anything as good as that). I’d love to se what they could’ve come up with, given the proper resources.

Judge Dee – in 1974 Nicholas Meyer, the unsung king of TV movies, made “Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders”, an adaptation of one of Robert H. Van Gulik’s great Judge Dee mysteries. It was clearly intended as a pilot for a series (British TV had already done a six episode Judger Dee series five years earlier, but I don’t know if they were awaare of this. I’d love to see them, but I’ll bet no copies survive). It featured an all-oriental-ancestry cast (except for the lead, who I didn’t realizewasn’t oriental until recently) , a real rarity, and period costumes and sets. I suspect the network Powers That Be thought it was either too expensive, or that not enough people would be interested in a series taking place in T’ang dynasty China. They gave star Kheigh Dheigh a detective series set in modern California instead, which flopped. In any event, I would’ve liked to see more Judge Dee with the same cast, as long as they stayed faithful to van Gulik. (There was talk of a Paul Verhoeven Judge Dee movie, but that fizzled. I’ve long held a suspicion that Judge Dredd was influenced by Judge Dee.)

I’ll second both The Tick animated series and The Prisoner.

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Cop Rock! I know that many hated it, but the songs (especially the song the young girl sang to her baby) were so beautiful. The show was like a bit of Broadway on a weekly basis. Hey - former Idol contestants could probably use the work.

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For books I’m always ready for another Martha Grimes’ Inspector Richard Jury mystery. I’d love to see a TV show based on the series.

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A Dark Horse…

Disney’s Chip’n’Dale, Rescue Rangers
Do it wrong, and it’d just be another cheap, utterly lame kiddie show.

However, if you do it just right, you’ll have a legend.

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Alien Nation

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Cartoon Network announces that it’s afternoon Miguzi block will be given over to90s cartoon that aired before their times and thus were cancelled early before finding an audience.

Sam & Max, Freelance Police
Freakazoid!
Earthworm Jim
The Tick

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Quantum Leap

Erase the last episode, make sure there’s a bible for the series, and make an ongoing plotline that actually involves them trying to get Sam back and figuring out what went ‘wrong’, not just incoherent technobable and ‘Ziggy says…’.

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The book *Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii * collected Twain’s series of articles written for a California newspaper. They paid for the trip, & Twain wrote a brillant description of Hawaii in the 1860s.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0824802888/104-9607823-9818313?v=glance&n=283155

After returning to California, there were many serious discussions about Twain being sent to Japan, for 1 to 2 years, to write another series, about that nation. But he quarreled with the publisher, & it fell through.

Twain’s fine sense of humor, & insight into Human nature would have given us an unparalleled view of Japan in transition.

I want Mark Twain’s Letters From The Land Of The Rising Sun, if you please.