10 Rebooted TV Shows That Were Better Than The Original

We’re living in an age of remakes, revivals, and reboots. A lot of the time that means having to put up with sad rehashes of The X-Files or tedious nostalgia-fests like Fuller House. It seems that no TV executive has ever heard the phrase “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”

Every month a new TV reboot or remake is announced, dragging a property out from decades in the grave or adapting a successful show from another country simply because it’s possible. Sure, it’s easy to complain about bad TV, but what’s hard is sifting through the pile of endless reboots to find something watchable.

Even better than watchable though, is great, and sometimes a TV reboot can be just that. Mixing the right behind the scenes talent with the right cast could actually elevate a TV reboot to the point where the original version looks like a pale imitation. This type of TV reboot doesn’t come along very often, but when it does it’s the job of us as television fans to sit up and take notice - and then binge every episode over the course of one sickening weekend.

It’s true that OG TV is usually your best bet, but when it comes to these 10 shows it’s safe to skip the original and follow the old saying: out with the old and in with the new.

So “reboot” may not actually be the right word to use when describing how the Japanese TV series Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger became Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers, but it’s pretty close. Essentially, the Power Rangers series we all know and love from our childhoods wouldn’t exist without the original Japanese show, and in many cases the footage from Sentai Zyuranger was outright reused for the US Power Rangers series. So let’s call it a reboot and then say that Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was a lot better.

By toning down some of the more insane Japanese elements of the original, which included witches and humans that evolved from dinosaurs, Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers actually invested in regular characters and played with the classic trope of giving them superpowers. As delightfully cheesy and dated as the show now appears, by smartly reusing Japanese footage the US series was allowed to show the badass Japanese martial arts that we all loved, while still giving us a semblance of story that kept us coming back week after week.

While Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger is by no means a bad show and certainly has its appeal, there’s a lot to be said about how Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers took its legacy and kept it going to this day.