Shows That Need a Reboot

Cafe Society
81

While I didn’t finish it all, although my wife did, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a reboot of the 90s show / comic book and it takes the material seriously. This is grimdark stuff. My issue with it wasn’t that so much as the teenage angst, which is tough to fault it for since that is the starting age of the character. I think in the source material as well.

I keep thinking I want reboots of things from before 2000 just to see them with updated FX and how much that makes a difference. However, having just re-watched Bab5, I also want to get rid of the 90s drama. I like it when shows are written for a forty minute episode and don’t break it down to chapters that signify commercials breaks. Mainly because then we have this mini cliff hangers. Brisco County Jr pulled that off well but I liked that show. Not sure it needs a reboot?

I would like Dresden Files reboot. Scifi was rebranding to SyFy at the time and a lot of exec oversight that really killed it. (They gave the show, about a wizard in Chicago, the direction of less magic because it’s “too confusing.”) Maybe, in general, I want a decent Urban Fantasy series?

I agree X-Files without the conspiracy theories? The revival first season was awesome. They should have stopped at that. Or maybe in my old age cynicism, I want a show about distrusting the government and acting like the court jester, showing exactly what the US has done over the years, even though no one will believe it. So, instead of a federal agency doing this, some private group?

Friday the 13th the series as a reboot would be fun.

Quantum Leap, Buck Rogers, Greatest American Hero, or Voyagers.

I like the recent MCU tv shows but I would rather have something like Daredevil and Jessica Jones where we get several seasons of it, rather than the one offs of Wandavision and Loki. Agents of Shield was okay but got old to me by season four.

So, yeah, something I think about!

Thanks for the conversation!

82

You mean like The Lone Gunmen? Or was that the joke?

83

I thought about just saying that show and I did think of it but I don’t want it connected to x-files was my thinking. Further, I guess I’m thinking more of an L&O type show that speaks to what the US government actually did rather than the conspiracies or plots of x-files.

Thanks for the reply!

84

Oh yeah, that show is called Frontline and it’s on PBS. I don’t watch it anymore because it makes me sad. A lighter version is called Last Week Tonight and is on HBO.

85

I’d be SO down for this.

While we’ll never get a reboot of our beloved Firefly, how about a new show set in the same 'verse.

86

I would totally watch that. I vaguely remember the National Lampoon story and actually forgot it was Bernie Wrightson. I think I have an old beat up copy, I should see if I can find it and give it a re-read.

87

I still think Adrien Brody should be cast as The Shadow. Or if they want to go younger, Adam Driver.

88

I refuse to give up hope……

89

LOL - Okay, fair. I do watch LWT and it is depressing. Or angering.

Sadly, I think I’m wanting a show where karma happens to the bad people and that doesn’t seem to be real.

Thanks for the responses!

91

I’m baffled that they haven’t already done an animated show. I’m assuming that the rights to Firefly went to Disney with the rest of the Fox entertainment stuff so there’s a platform for it, doing an animated show would solve the laundry list of problems Whedon famously said would prevent further Firefly shows (including any actors being…unavailable), they wouldn’t even have to record their bits at the same time, and there are a bunch of stories already written for the comics including Book’s backstory (which would require none of the main cast).

But there’s probably some contractual stuff tying actors to their current shows (e.g. The Rookie, 911:Lone Star, Resident Alien) that would cause hiccups. And also it’s possible that Whedon simply doesn’t want to do it, although given the way things have been going for him recently he may want an easy win.

So maybe a Firefly-verse show with the occasional cameo from the original cast is all we could get.

92

Alan Tudyk could probably cover half the voices on his own.

93

And he wouldn’t have any dialog of his own to do, so he’d have plenty of bandwidth.

94

Combine it with a revival of Mr. Ed. The horse practices witchcraft, and no one believes Wilbur when he complains about it. Endora is cast as an aging mare who bites Wilbur and tries to trip him when he visits the barn.

95

Gee, sucked all the fun out of that idea.
Maybe it could just be a continuation of the show in a universe where the movie didn’t happen.

96

I was never the greatest fan of The X-Files since (for me) it was supposed to be set in the ‘real world’ and yet every week it had totally supernatural stories. The dichotomy (for me) emphasised by Scully being a total sceptic of the supernatural and alien stuff and yet every week getting proof she was wrong. And still she didn’t believe…

Now it’s been decades since I watched it but (at the time) I used to like the show Project UFO

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_U.F.O.

No idea whether it holds up today. The premise being two USAF investigators looked into UFO sightings which they were usually able to more or less prove had a mundane explanation. Occasionally though they simply couldn’t explain it and left it open.

I understand it was based on genuine USAF work known as Project Blue Book and there has been a much more recent show called Project Blue Book but I’ve never seen any of that.

TCMF-2L

97

This makes me think of one that I’m having hard time finding. Maybe it was Project UFO, but I thought it was called something, something Blue Book and it was about two Air Force guys who went around investigating UFO reports. My searches for it return too many results for History Channels 2019 series Project Blue Book for me to find anything.

Did the show I’m thinking of exist? Was it just @TCMF-2L’s Project UFO, and I’m just remembering the characters saying they worked for Project Blue Book?

I remember liking the show, but I was a kid, and like mentioned in my previous posts, then it was just gone.

98

You’re probably remembering Project UFO. It was loosely based on Project Blue Book, and many of the episodes were either dramatizations of actual Blue Book cases or were inspired by them - creator Jack Webb reportedly pored through Air Force files to get episode ideas.

I don’t think Blue Book was directly referenced in the show, but it would almost certainly have been part of the cultural discussion around the show, and it would surprise me if reviewers, critics, and publicity materials didn’t mention it in connection to the show.

Since it was effectively a dramatization of Project Blue Book (albeit displaced by a decade or so), I’d expect someone who watched it as a kid to confabulate a memory that it was explicitly identified as being about Project Blue Book in the title or in dialogue.

99

You might enjoy Welcome to Sweden, from a few years back. A husband moves to Sweden with his Swedish wife. It’s funny. I’m not sure where it is streaming right now.

100

I used to watch Project UFO. as I recall, they mentioned Project Blue Book in the closing credits of each episode.

ETA: Just skimmed through some episodes on YouTube. Not mentioned in the credits, but I am fairly certain that the name came up at some point in the series.

101

I did a rewatch of the X-files a while ago, and I was struck by how much Scullly’s skepticism gets exaggerated. The number of episodes where Mulder says it’s X, Scully disagrees, and Mulder is proven right is actually pretty small. More commonly, it was something like:

Mulder: This is clearly vampires!
Scully; Obviously, this is gang violence.
(They both see a human transform into a wolf)
Mulder: Okay, new theory: werewolves.
Scully: I’ll get the silver bullets.

Once a particular paranormal explanation is proven, Scully gets on board immediately. She accepts the existence of aliens (iirc) in the first episode, and is consistent in accepting their existence for the rest of the series. There were also several episodes where there was no supernatural element, or the supernatural element was only confirmed to the viewers, and not to the characters in-show. Scully’s skepticism would also often close down false leads. (“Yes, clearly this town has a werewolf problem, but this particular person was killed by a bear, not a wolf.”) And Mulder himself had a blind spot when it came to religious explanations for mysterious phenomena, particularly western religions, where Scully was more likely to entertain supernatural explanations in those situations.