The TV remake game

Standard

I’m copying this game from lwe’s newsgroup.

Let us suppose a network decided that you, yes YOU, are a marketing
genius, and they hired you, at extravagant rates, to create three
series for them.

The first is to be a continuation of an existing series that was
cancelled too soon — tell them which series should have been kept
alive, and what direction it would take to prevent a second
cancellation.

The second is to be a remake/re-imagining of a canceled series, and
you have all of TV’s history to play with, from the 1940s to last
week.

And finally, give them a spin-off — doesn’t matter whether the
original series is still thriving or long dead.

Here are mine.

Revival: “Thundarr the Barbarian” (I’d change it to have one or two long-term enemies for him to face over a season)

Remake: “CBS Mystery Movies” (Lifetime tried to revive this idea–a weekly two-hour tv movie mystery with a rotating cast of regulars–but they weren’t fun and didn’t have the budget.

Spin-off: “Mace!” Pre-trade rebellion exploits of Jedi Knight Mace Windu as he patrols the mean streets of Coruscant, the city planet.

It was pretty damn tempting to call for The Dresden Files to be revived or remade, but in the end I went with these instead. And yeah, that’s two cartoons. I used to watch a lot of cartoons.

What about you?

4 thoughts on “The TV remake game

  1. Stephen Plotkin

    I just came across this and cannot resist.

    Revival: A few years ago, I would have said, hands down, Kolchak: the Night Stalker. But then they went ahead and brought it back, and we all know how well that went. So I am going to suggest Voyagers, a kids’ history-adventure show from the early 80s. Mostly remembered today, if at all, for the Darwin Awards quality of its star’s subsequent demise. But it was actually a rather decent, efficient entertainment that was cornball but not completely stupid. The beauty is that you wouldn’t really need to tweak it that much. The show was a moderate success, and was canned after one season only because network types are moronic greedheads. But there, I’ve committed a redundancy. To insure success, however, I would draft Joss Whedon to write and produce. It’s the sort of thing he could really run with.

    Remake: Super President. Yeah, you know you want it. Just imagine what the evil minds over at adult swim could do with it. In fact, I’m kind of shock they haven’t picked up on it already.

    Spin-off: This is the hardest for me, but I’m going to go with “Reuben,” the misadventures of a sleazeball talent agent whose only successful client is a squeaky clean family musical act that he secretly can’t stand. Think a little bit of Arli$$, a little bit of Entourage, the faintest hint of Broadway Danny Rose, but no Partridge Family whatsoever.

Comments are closed.