The TV Recycling Bin

Entertainment Weekly has released its list of Hottest TV Projects of 2012. And they look familiar. Very familiar. It's because most of them are remakes of classic TV. From the already-discussed-here remake of The Munsters – which sounds like a head-on collision between Tim Burton and Twilight – to Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane's reboot of The Flintstones, everything old is new again.

Which begs the question – why do they think all this unoriginality can work?


One of the commenters on the EW post had a very good point. When the original versions of these shows – and other remake candidates like Bewitched and The Rifleman – were on the air, there were only three networks, and all programming had to appeal to all ages, adults and children alike. Kids have their own channels now – Disney, Cartoon Network (in the daytime), Nickelodeon, The Hub – so adults are expecting the mainstream channels to be filled with grittier programming.

Apparently, network executives seem to think that the solution to this is to take classic, aimed-at-all-ages TV and make it grittier. This means adding darker twists to The Munsters and crude humor to The Flintstones, just serving to infuriate people who remember the more innocent originals.

In their search to mine nostalgia out of everything, they're even looking to spin a TV series out of Valley of the Dolls, an MST3K-worthy camp classic (which was supposed to portray the horrors of drug addiciton, but consisted mostly of Patty Duke gobbling handfulls of pills and screaming at everyone around her at the top of her lungs). Which goes to show you – wouldn't all this effort that's being put forth to mine the past and try to give it a fresh coat of paint be better served doing something original?

Okay, there have been successes with people taking something old and not-that-great, stripping it down to its barest framework and building something totally new out of it (Battlestar Galactica and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic come immediately to mind). But they're the exception rather than the rule (and, again, the key concept here is retaining only the skeleton of the original and covering it with something new).

I've often said that it's geeks who can save television and movies from the mundanity of retreads – after all, who has more new and fresh ideas? If you have ideas, there has never been a better time to pitch them. Your concept may not end up on a major network right away, but often, it's the smaller channels that are making all the noise nowadays. Swinging '60s pop culture like Bewitched and Valley of the Dolls wouldn't even be considered for retreads if Mad Men hadn't made such a splash on AMC.

Maybe in the future, if there's more geek-created TV shows, we may have a "hottest TV projects of the year" list that really lives up to its name – original, challenging, thought-provoking and just plain entertaining, the way good television should be. – Bonnie Walling

  • http://profile.typepad.com/tamara126 Tamara Hecht

    I really hate to say this, but it’s NOT a good time to pitch new ideas. There’s a reason it’s all remakes, and that reason is the companies don’t want to take a risk on a new show. Sure, it’s risky to churn out the same thing over again and slap a “New & Improved” label on it, but this is the situation we’re facing regardless.
    If you have a new idea, it had better be for a new form of distribution. Otherwise, you won’t get through to your audience. Those who are managing the traditional methods are generally not open to new shows.

  • Scott D

    It’s something I haven’t been covering in Lost in Translation, but many times, the remake is because it has a built-in audience already. People who remember the old series will tune in for at least the pilot episode to see how it compares to the original. With the TV audience so spread out among the broadcast networks and specialty channels, it’s harder to get and keep people watching.
    As Tamara mentioned above, the economy isn’t helping. It’s easier to green light a show with an existing audience before the first episode than it is to spend the time to build one. Shows like M*A*S*H and Cheers wouldn’t have survived their first season if they aired today because of the desire for near-instant hits. Add to it that in hard times, people want something comforting, and nostalgia is comforting, a reminder of better times.
    I hope that the situation changes soon. We need original works. What are people going to remake in twenty years?