12 Hilariously Bad Attempts To Reboot Classic TV Shows

5. Life On Mars

Smash hit BBC crime drama Life On Mars got the US reboot treatment in 2008. The plot centers on detective Sam Tyler who, after being in a car accident in the present day, wakes up in 1973. Unsure which of the two is reality, Tyler spends the series trying to work out what happened to him alongside Gene Hunt (Harvel Keitel) and his team in the Homicide Division. Due to a huge ratings slump as the series continued, ABC announced it would end having had just one series. The news of the cancellation gave the production team enough time to write a proper ending to tie up the story lines. Discussions of the ending resulted in the US production team saying the UK ending 'wasn't extreme enough.' To this day it is hard to fathom how they failed to simply stick with the original ending (no spoilers - it is well worth watching if you haven't already) rather than the absurd resolution they chose to use instead. Are you ready for this? Neither of Tyler's realities actually existed, instead they were created by the computers of a spacecraft on the first manned mission to Mars as part of a search for genetic DNA (they were on a gene hunt, geddit?). All the people and places he had known were either members of the crew or parts of the craft. The final word on this has to go to Matthew Graham, the creator of the UK series who said of the US remake; 'it beggars belief doesn't it?'