3. It's True to the Spirit of the Original
Unlike the cashing in feel of the 1987 TV pilot of the same name, the new A&E production is careful to hold fast to the spirit of the original cinematic material. The creative minds behind Bates Motel have done a good job in capturing the mood and tone that audiences have always identified with Psycho and its sequels. While its set in modern times, Bates Motel manages to maintain the basic backstory premise established in Psychos I through III. Viewers are presented with a Norma Bates who lives up to the expectations planted in our subconscious via the plot and storylines from the films. She is a loving and caring mother, but also smothering, and prone at times to frightening irrationality. Even in this first episode we can see and feel the psychological aspect of mother that will someday be planted into Normans subconscious. Although the setting is contemporary, there is a nostalgic aspect to the production design, and the series manages to seem familiar in a way that would seem difficult to capture more than a half century after the original. But it works.