I doubt anyone would make it truly accurate considering Almanzo Wilder was 25 and Laura Ingalls was 15 when they started dating.
HBO’s Carnivale ended too soon, imo. I’d love to see that brought back.
Man, I loved the 90s original L&O where it was truly about the case. While there were some great actors in the roles of the investigators and the prosecution team, each episode was extremely focused on the case and we barely ever learned anything about the teams private lives. It’s not that I’m opposed to fleshing out characters, but “police procedural where the cops are drunks and have a series of bad relationships” outside of work are a dime a dozen. L&O being so focused on the actual case work was actually an interesting exception to the norm, it harkened back to the old school “FBI Files” or even “Dragnet” type shows that didn’t get into the private lives of the law enforcement.
True to the books is what I’m wishing for. Laura fudged their age difference in the books; I’m thinking, without pulling out my books, that they were about five years apart in the books. Her true story is equally interesting. I’d like to see that one day, as well.
I’d love to see Better Off Ted come back. It was a good comedy, quick witted, clever and easy to watch. I think I’ve watched the original run 3 or 4 times now.
Another one (that I’m also rewatching, again) is Santa Clarita Diet. The perfect amount of comedy, vomit, blood and the word ‘fuck’. My real issue with this show is that it appears the writers didn’t know it was going to be cancelled. Not only was the main plot device never resolved, the last episode was a HUGE cliffhanger that set up what would have been the following season.
I am a huge fan of Northern Exposure but I don’t think a reboot would work. I think Fleischman would not feel (and act) so stranded if he had modern social media and similar methods of instant communication and connectivity. Some of the story lines that were used in the original series (and frankly made it so endearing) wouldn’t make sense today, like Elaine showing up after she breaks up with whatshisname, the dude she left Joel for, or Shelly and Holling’s various family members stopping by to catch up, or or or or… KBHR was something of anachronism even in the early 90’s and certainly wouldn’t work today even though it was vital to the spirit of the show. Maurice’s ambitions of turning Cicely into some sort of far-north Palm Beach, and his constant failures to do so, likely wouldn’t play today either: a lot of what he proposed in the show (fishing and golf resorts, etc) would be wildly popular today. In fact the small town the show was filmed in actually built a huge golf resort right outside the city a few years after filming finished.
Part of the magic of Northern Exposure was Cicely and its populace managed to be isolated from the negative influences of the world without being isolated from modern times, if that makes sense. I just don’t see how it could be done today.
One thing NE did well was completely ignore politics. However, we live in different times and social media and the impact it has on the hoi polloi can’t be ignored.
I read this as a reboot of Alienated and was about to reply, I’ll drink a gin and… gin to that!
In case I was the only one who watched it, Alienated (TV Series 2003–2004) - IMDb
Thank you, those are excellent points about Northern Exposure, and I agree with you… However, I am still wondering if any updated episodes WERE ever made and sitting on a shelf somewhere… I kept reading, ‘it’s in the works! it’s coming! It’s a thing!’…and then…nothing! Just ‘stay tuned’. wth
This topic is kind of hard for me, because we have (for many posters), the blurring between reboots, spin-offs, and continuations of cancelled series. So, trying to stay true to the OP is definitely hard.
So, sticking to reboots, I’ll first put in a second vote for Brimstone, which remains one of my favorite cancelled shows I can’t get on DVD. I’ll also put in a vote for my next favorite TV show that is difficult to find, and that’s Werewolf (Fox, 1987) - because a protagonist that has to try to fight the beast without as well as the beast within is always interesting to me.
Two other gone, and largely forgotten shows I would l like to see reborn:
Tremors, the Series, was actually much better than the last few Tremors feature films, and never felt like it lost any of the campy fun of the original. So reboot the whole story as a series, perhaps revealing that everything came from the escaped Mixmaster gene-swapping material from the hidden lab to be consistent across the board. Spoiler for those who care about something revealed in the first few episodes of the series, but not a big deal.
Dark Angel (2000)- while it is extremely dated, and I, along with a lot of fans, really hated the second season, there was a lot of good material that could work in a reboot. For that matter it was ahead of the curve for strong female leads and LGBTQ+ values. Other highlights - the USA as a second or third class nation, but still with delusions of superiority? Big check. Social and economic cliff becoming the Grand Canyon? Check. Genetic engineering use and abuse, including successes and failures.
My Three Sons: I might enjoy a modern take on such a show.
Law and Order: Goes without saying. I’ve watched too many repeats.
Dark Angel Season One was outstanding. They made a huge mistake killing off Lydecker, who was an intriguing and excellent villain. Show was never the same after that. Jessica Alba sure looked amazing back then!
How about an update of Alias featuring the story of Sydney and Vaughn’s daughter, now 19 or 20 following in her mom’s footsteps. Maybe Jennifer Garner, Victor Garber, or even Bradley Cooper could make some cameos. It would be a nice role for an up and coming young lady.
e.g Natalia Dyer.
I liked Cop Rock, but they’d need to sort out the pacing problems.
Two “fish out of water” comedies:
Perfect Strangers: An immigrant as a family member, reacting to American ways. Maybe reverse the plot and have an American family sent overseas.
Green Acres: The tolerance of the native rural population for the transplanted city folk. And vice versa. (The point was the ridiculous situations - otherwise it would be another Northern Exposure.)
And, I would propose “The Odd Couple” but I don’t believe that there are two of today’s actors who could make it work.
If you’re someone who saw the direct-to-video sequels and the Syfy tv show from almost 20 years ago, you probably already knew this, but just in case you didn’t… Kevin Bacon himself actually filmed a pilot for a Tremors TV show around 2018 or so but it didn’t get picked up.
Here’s a story about it Kevin Bacon Shares ‘Tremors’ TV Series Plot, Details, More – IndieWire
and here’s a trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6q2NWcpbzQ
The problem with X-Files is that it revolves around conspiracy theories, which have a very different place in American culture now than they did 20 years ago. I’m not sure I want to see Mulder as a QAnon fan.
In the coda of the series finale, we see a young Isabelle accidentally finding the building blocks Jack Bristow had designed as a test for spatial reasoning. They were prominently featured earlier in the series as a key plot point, as Sydney was re-constructing her dimly remembered childhood, and realized that her father used her as a guinea pig for his program to test and train young children as future operatives.
Isabelle promptly and without hesitation assembles them into a tower. The implication is that she is at least as capable as her mother. Then she hears her mother calling her, and she promptly and without hesitation knocks the tower over and runs outside to play.
The producers later confirmed that this was a very deliberate and intentional signal that Isabelle had broken the cycle, and she wasn’t going to follow in her parents’ footsteps. It wouldn’t be the first time a reboot missed the plot of the original, but having Isabelle become an operative would trash Jack’s, Syndey’s, and Vaughn’s character arcs, and the whole arc of the series.
Marcus’ kids and Marshall’s kid(s) becoming operatives, on the other hand…
(Also, Jack Bristow died in the finale, so a Victor Garber cameo would be a bit difficult to pull off. I suppose a flashback with de-aging, which they did pre-CGI in the original, maybe. It would actually be in genre for him to turn up alive, but that would also trash his character arc. But maybe a clone or duplicate, which is also in genre for the show…).
LOL, I was gonna say that sounds like a production cancelled at episode 8 kinda show
Perfect Strangers remake - there is already a fish out of water sit-com, ‘United States of Al’. And isn’t there already a pampered-princess in Paris show, streaming somewhere?
Green Acres remake - I don’t think that would fly today. The countryside seems to be populated with ‘guns and Jesus’ tRumpanzees, family farms are being decimated, and big corporations are growing Monsanto crops. There may be bumbling fools for the city slicker to interact with, but not much charm like GA had.
The Odd Couple - remakes have been done previously, none stuck.
The Prisoner
The Patrick McGoohan series was a model of quirkiness, originality, weirdness, and wit. The 2009 reboot wasn’t.
You couldn’t expect to simply remake the original – we’re out of that whole Cold War Spy thing altogether, but we are definitely in a new era of paranoia, spy drones, monitors everywhere, and social concerns of all types. It’s rich ground, provided you can pull off the kind of mix that the original series had. And you need a compelling central character, a reason he or she was abducted, and plausible contending villains, even if it’s al eventually revealed to be a dream/delusion/simulation/what have you.
Plus we now have much better effects. Rover doesn’t have to be a bouncing weather balloon – it can be a morphing CGI creation with virtually unlimited capability.
You need someplace interesting to film it, as the original had Portmeirion. Swakopmund wouldn’t cut it.