Ill start off by being completely honest with you. I shudder at the thought of reboots - theyre usually an excuse for some money hungry TV execs to bring back a much-loved property with the sole purpose of rinsing it for everything its got. Just the mere mention of the word reboot sends a sharp stabbing sensation through my cerebral cortex with memories of recent classics such as Mockingbird Lane, Dallas, 90210, Knight Rider and V coming to the fore. Admittedly these problems can usually be attributed to Hollywood. Their fear of new properties quite often means they revert back to something they know (as we see with countless movies), so its no real surprise it happens with TV shows as well. It stifles creativity and variety of content, but from a financial perspective often makes sense. A real bugbear of mine (from a British perspective) is their fondness of taking our shows and remaking them for an American audience - Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, Coupling and Spaced have particularly fallen foul of disastrous remakes, as well as this little gem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNca7IsC8qE&feature=related So, with such a strong position against reboots in the first place, why have I decided to write this? Well, theres an exception to every rule in life - and here I present to you 5 of them. Theres a mixture here of dramas and game-shows, all of which Im confident would work if they were brought back in 2013. To be clear, this is not a list of my favourite shows of all time, merely a list of ones that I'd bring back if I could without desecrating any TV institutions. The simple fact is, with the prevalence of utter tripe on our channels these days, surely we cant go wrong bringing back some classic entertainment institutions? The BBC have been most successful recently with a reboot of Come Dancing, and with a special episode of Jonathan Creek coming in Easter as well as the amazing success at bringing Dr. Who back, they have shown that if its done properly it can be amazing; they just need to pick carefully which ones next. On a side note, it's frightening how many shows I've considered for this list that, upon further research, actually already have reboots in the pipeline (for example The Crystal Maze) - as far as I can be certain, none of these 5 are currently in that process. Without further ado, here are the 5 TV shows we wish theyd reboot.
5. Lost In Space
Lost In Space aired between 1965-1968 (predating Star Trek by a year) following the adventures of the Robinson family. In 1997, the international race for space colonisation had begun with the US launching Jupiter 2 on a 6 year mission to the nearby Alpha Centauri system which they believed could support human life. From millions of volunteers, the Robinson family were chosen to take the trip with the assistance of Major Donald West, a US Space Corps pilot. Things went wrong from the start, however, when a foreign agent managed to sneak on-board thus causing the flight calculations to be wrong due to the heavier load. Soon the ship was lost and all the Robinsons could do was try to find their way home. Its quite likely youre familiar with the story, mainly due to its 1998 outing on the big screen starring Matt LeBlanc. This movie was truly disastrous and probably wrecked any chances of us seeing it return to our telly boxes - but this is a massive shame. With Star Trek seemingly on hiatus until the movie series has finished, theres a real lack of Sci-Fi shows actually set in space - and at its core Lost In Space is an ideal proposition. Its the story of a family who have sacrificed everything for the betterment of humankind, only to find theyve been seriously let down by those they trusted and are left to fend for themselves in the unending vastness of the Universe with no way to know where they are.
Ideas For A Reboot: The relationship between TV shows and movies can quite often be the same as with video games - i.e. they very rarely work. We saw this in the 1998 movie and since then the Lost In Space franchise has hardly been remembered fondly. The movie, however, did not convey any of the original themes and ideas of being Lost in Space, the original series was far more claustrophobic and intent on developing the characters. If brought back in 2013, all we'd need here is a healthy budget and writing team to bring it in line with our current views of what the future would be like (away from Cold War rhetoric and more like something along the lines of humans needing to leave earth because of global warming), oh, and keep Matt Le Blanc as far away from it as possible.