Rewinds & retreads

As options expand, networks go retro trying to please

These are the Top 5 TV shows Arkansas Democrat-Gazette readers say they’d like to see revived.
These are the Top 5 TV shows Arkansas Democrat-Gazette readers say they’d like to see revived.

To paraphrase Francois Villon, "Where are the shows of yesteryear?"

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The famous 15th-century French poet, ne'er-do-well and celebrated Lothario used "snows" in his poem and was lamenting the transience of earthly beauty by citing a list of famously dead women, including Bertha of the Big Foot, Beatrix, Aeli and Heloise.

If, however, Villon were with us today, he could just as easily wax poetic about the demise of the favorite TV shows of his misspent youth. Viewers get passionate about their programs, and cancellation of favorites can be an emotional blow.

At least with TV, there's always hope they will miraculously return from the dead, along with their fetching leading ladies -- not Bertha, but such lovelies as Buffy Summers, Brenda Leigh Johnson, Inara Serra and Lorelai Gilmore.

In case you don't recognize them, those are the women from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Closer, Firefly and Gilmore Girls. Those are also four of the defunct series Arkansans said they'd love to see resurrected from the scrap heap of shows of yesteryear.

Bringing back old favorites seems to be happening on a more frequent basis these days, from the traditional broadcast networks and cable outfits to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.

Examples: Fox canceled Arrested Development in 2006, but Netflix brought it back for one season in 2013. Another 17 episodes are in the works for 2016.

It didn't take Netflix that long to come to the rescue of Longmire. After three seasons, A&E sent the contemporary Western riding off into the sunset in 2014, but Netflix commissioned a fourth season that downloaded in September.

A fifth season was recently announced.

And Gilmore Girls fans are getting to go back to Stars Hollow. Their beloved series, last seen in 2007 on The CW, is being revived

by Netflix as four 90-minute mini-movies written by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband, Daniel Palladino.

Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel will reprise their mother/daughter roles. Others from the original have signed on as well.

Fox has a 10-episode revival of Prison Break in the works for next year. Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell have signed on to reprise their roles as Michael Scofield and Lincoln Burrows, respectively. What? You thought Michael was dead? Nope.

Unlike the plans for Gilmore Girls, some revivals are that in name or premise only, and others can't resist tweaking the reboot for a contemporary audience.

For example, ABC has a series titled Fantasy Island in development. Unlike the 1978-84 original, however, there will be no island, no Tattoo ("Da plane! Da plane!") and no Mr. Roarke. The "island" is now a company that can indulge your greatest fantasy and is run by a woman. Why bother?

Did you love ABC's Hart to Hart from 1979 to 1984? NBC hears you and has a re-imaging in development. Only this time, instead of updating Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers, the crime busters will be a couple of gay guys named Jonathan Hart and Dan Hartman.

Word is that 20th Century Fox Television is rebooting The A-Team and shopping for a network. The series will be tweaked by making two of the four team members women.

Netflix has revived Full House (1987-95) as Fuller House, a sequel set for next year that will follow the recently widowed D.J. Tanner-Fuller (Candace Cameron Bure), her sister Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and her best friend Kimmy (Andrea Barber) as they raise another brood of kids.

Several of the other original cast members will appear, at least in cameos.

And CBS is bringing back MacGyver as a prequel to the 1985-92 original. A prequel with a young star will allow CBS to have a series that might appeal to viewers under 65.

CBS is also developing a brand new Star Trek. The first episode will air on the regular network affiliates in January 2017, but the rest of the season will only be available on its streaming service, CBS All Access.

What's with the sudden interest in reviving old series? For the nascent streaming services, it's an opportunity to offer subscribers something familiar as a way to get them in the door.

And for broadcast networks, well, it's just a continuation of the age-old tradition of hedging their bets in an age when the audience is continuing to balkanize.

Some viewers may grouse that the practice is further evidence that TV is nothing if not derivative, and the vast majority of new programming lacks originality. But TV has been in the copycat game since, literally, Day 1.

In the earliest days of network television, the most popular programs were borrowed from radio. The so-called "Golden Age" of television with early hits such as I Love Lucy, The Jack Benny Program, The Burns and Allen Show and Gunsmoke, all got their start on radio.

Gunsmoke, which spawned dozens of copycats and variations on the adult Western, began life as a radio drama in 1952 with William Conrad (TV's future detective Frank Cannon) as Marshal Matt Dillon.

The radio series ran until 1961. Gunsmoke the TV series, with James Arness in the lead, aired from 1955 to 1975 and still holds the record as TV's longest running prime-time drama.

Derivative? In 1959 there were 26 Westerns airing during prime time. Eight of the top 10 shows were Westerns.

NBC's Law & Order (1990-2010) tied Gunsmoke for longevity, but fell far short in the number of total episodes.

Lack of originality? TV shows are exceedingly expensive to produce and launch, so NBC was hedging its bets with every Law & Order spinoff to join the schedule. They included Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-); Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2001-2011); Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005-06); and Law & Order: LA (2010-11).

Law & Order: SVU may be the only one still on the air, but NBC isn't finished with Dick Wolf productions yet. The network has ordered Law & Order: You the Jury, a live reality series that will allow viewers to decide the verdict on actual legal cases.

NBC isn't the only network to play it safe via the spinoff track. CBS has enjoyed great success with its forensic police procedurals, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and NCIS.

CSI debuted in 2000 and finally wrapped Sept. 27. Along the way, the series spawned CSI: Miami (2002-12); CSI: NY (2004-13); and the latest variation, CSI: Cyber, now in Season 2.

NCIS, TV's No. 1 drama, currently in its 13th season, begat NCIS: Los Angeles (2009-) and NCIS: New Orleans (2014-).

The success of these familiar series is due in large part to one of the main reasons viewers watch TV. As much as we complain about nothing new being on, audiences flock to the familiar. These shows are the comfort food of television.

As one observer put it, they're "cut and paste" shows -- the settings and characters may vary, but the format remains the same.

Spinoffs are the Holiday Inn Expresses or Hampton Inns of the airwaves: We know what to expect. We are seldom surprised, and we find comfort in the familiar surroundings. If only they came with a complimentary Continental breakfast instead of serial killers and the autopsy of the week.

Topic for another time: What does it say about our society when our go-to shows for relaxation involve corpses, killers and courtrooms? Is there some sort of communal catharsis we seek in our 60-minute dramas?

And what about reviving past series? Is it just laziness on the part of the networks? Not necessarily. It's mainly about money -- trying to save it up front and make it on the back end.

In the good ol' days of three networks, a hit show could boast huge audiences. For example, Bonanza ran on NBC from 1959 to 1973 and peaked at No. 1 between 1964 and 1967. In those three years, the series averaged 35.1 million viewers.

Longmire, a "modern" Western so beloved by its core audience that Netflix saved it from extinction, peaked at 4.42 million viewers on A&E in 2013.

With today's audience increasingly fragmented by broadcast, cable, satellite and streaming service providers, TV producers are looking for any advantage, and rebooting a familiar name is one of those.

It's also no guarantee of success.

Syfy's 2003 reimagining of Battlestar Gallactica (1978-79) was better than the original, especially because Starbuck (Katee Sackhoff) was female. CBS' Hawaii 5-o is in its sixth season and Heroes Reborn is currently getting a shot as a limited miniseries on Thursday nights on NBC.

Reboots that failed miserably in recent years include Ironside (NBC, 2013), with Blair Underwood in the Raymond Burr wheelchair. The plug was pulled after three episodes.

Bionic Woman (NBC, 2007) starred Michelle Ryan in the Jamie Sommers role, played in 1976-78 by Lindsay Wagner. It fizzled after eight episodes.

Charlie's Angels (ABC, 2011) lasted all of four episodes. TNT's 2012 revival of CBS' beloved Dallas (1978-91) made it three seasons, and that was two seasons too long.

TV keeps trying. What else is on the horizon? Showtime is bringing back Twin Peaks as a limited series. Each episode will be directed by David Lynch and written with his original co-creator, TV veteran Mark Frost.

The X-Files is returning to Fox as a six-part limited series in January with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprising their roles as Mulder and Scully.

ABC brought back The Muppets this season and CBS has (for some unknown reason) renewed The Odd Couple for a second season. NBC is working on a new Xena for 2016.

Other shows are on the way. Whether they'll succeed will be, as always, a crap shoot.

Style on 11/22/2015

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