The Twilight Zone Reboot: 10 Classic Episodes It Should Remake

The Story:

An American on a walking trip in 1920s Europe gets lost in a storm and stumbles upon a remote castle where an order of monks have locked up a man howling in agony. He claims to be imprisoned here at the persecution of an intolerant religious order after kissing a girl in public, while, according to the monks, the man is the Devil himself and the years of relative peace since the First World War are a result of him being imprisoned here.

Why Remake It?

Unlike the more specifically technology and media-focused likes of Black Mirror, The Twilight Zone has always had a broader supernatural canvas. In the original series, various incarnations of Death and the Devil were as much regular characters as the robots and aliens that most associate with the show, and it would be good for the new version to continue with 21st Century takes on some of that metaphysical material.

The Howling Man is one of the more conceptually interesting devil episodes, and its central moral dilemma (is it worth letting one probably innocent man suffer on the tiny chance that he really is evil incarnate and his imprisonment makes the whole rest of the world a better place?) still has mileage.

Meanwhile, the remote European castle full of fundamentalist monks and a mysterious howling prisoner is the stuff of full-on classic gothic horror. That the original does this in a somewhat hammy and stagey fashion just opens the door for a new version to really embrace that shadowy gothic mystery.