The upcoming season on American television is stocked to bursting point with remakes, “re-imaginings” and “new spins” on old shows and movies. The trend for remakes began to pick up pace (on television, at least) with the new version of “Beverly Hills 90210” and is continuing apace with new versions of the equally soapy “Melrose Place”, 80s sci-fi hit “V” and “Eastwick”, based on 1980s smash “The Witches of Eastwick”.
Networks are also developing series based on films such as “Parenthood” and “St Elmo’s Fire” and are apparently “interested” in re-doing such iconic shows as “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Hawaii 5-0”. Nancy Tellem, the Group Chief for CBS Entertainment says that when “You’re dealing with limited budgets… there’s a level of awareness of a successful show… they know the title already. There’s a lot of cachet regardless of what the new series is about.”
ABC’s chief of scripted series Suzanne Patmore-Gibbs says “We were going through that big debate – should we do remakes? We don’t want to be appear derivative, but then you see something like “Battlestar Galactica” and “You kind of can’t say no out of the gate.” Not that remaking a success automatically equals a new hit.
Just ask the producers of the modern versions of “Knight Rider” and “Bionic Woman”. Even the new “90210” has seen only modest ratings. “Any time you try to do a remake, there are going to be fans dubious of your efforts,” Scott Peters, executive producer on the new “V”, admits. “We don’t want to – no pun intended – alienate viewers of the original.” It seems that only time will tell whether the new versions of these former hits will be a “Battlestar” – or a “Bionic Woman”.
