10 Terrible TV Adaptations Of Classic Films (That Everybody Forgot About)

Adaptation Of – RoboCop (1987)

RoboCop holds up as one of the most iconic films of the 1980s to this day, with its commentaries on corporate greed, unregulated capitalism and the media continuing to be surprisingly poignant.

Depicting a honest police officer who is murdered and revived as an ‘avenging angel’ cyborg, its uniqueness helped it stand out in an action genre that was becoming increasingly saturated with generic and formulaic flicks by the time of its release.

Like any successful film, it was milked for everything that it was worth. Two awful sequels were released in 1990 and 1993, the latter of which dropped star Peter Weller and simply hoped that nobody would notice. The less said about the 2014 remake the better also, which wasted a cast including Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson in a by-the-books action piece that lacked any of the humour or scathing social commentary of the original.

There were two television adaptations between the release of the original third film and the reboot, both Canadian in origin. The first, released in 1994, was family friendly, removing violence in favour of bumbling villains. The second was darker and served as a sequel to the original film (ignoring the sequels and previous series) but was made on a shoestring budget and was heavily criticised as a result. Both were abysmal.