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TV show reboots never seem as good

Sony has a reboot in development for Bewitched. It's being reimagined as an hour long drama. That's where things go off the rails with reboots.. .turning a comedy into a drama, or vice versa. I enjoyed it as a comedy, and want to see it come back as a comedy. My prediction is failure for this new Bewitched.
 
Sony has a reboot in development for Bewitched. It's being reimagined as an hour long drama. That's where things go off the rails with reboots.. .turning a comedy into a drama, or vice versa. I enjoyed it as a comedy, and want to see it come back as a comedy. My prediction is failure for this new Bewitched.
I can't see a new Bewitched ever being produced, either as a comedy or drama. How in the world can a silly sitcom about a witch, her mortal husband, and her eccentric witch/warlock relatives and acquaintances be turned into a drama?

And who would star in the show? Bewitched was one of the comedies from the 1960s who's cast was close to perfect. Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York (sorry, but Dick Sargent was a 3rd rate replacement, as necessary as it was), Agnes Moorehead, Paul Lynde, and Bernard Fox are irreplaceable.
 
Rugrats initially was going to have the original creators and executive producers on board but a regime change at Nickelodeon changed all that. I watched some of the Rugrats reboot but it’s not all that and a bag of chips.
 
Maybe it's because Sargent was the first Darrin I knew, but I prefer him.

York always seemed so mean.
Dick York played Darrin as a much more flustered and aggravated character due to the antics of all the supernatural types he had to deal with.

But there is also a real life component as York had to endure a lot of physical pain while on the show, which eventually forced him to give up the role.
 
As did "The New Gidget" an abysmal reboot of the 60s gem of a series. There's a reason Caryn Richman didn't become the next Sally Field. There were a number of bad reboots in the 80s like "Still the Beaver" and "The New Monkees". Plus there were all the syndicated revivals of network sitcoms like "Too Close For Comfort".
"Still The Beaver" had a pretty good run. "The New Monkees" was a failure. I remember one politically charged episode which had, imo, no place being there.
 
The 1967-1970 reboot of Jack Webb's "Dragnet" was a success, due in no small part that Jack Webb reprised the roll of Sgt. Joe Friday who he had played on radio in the 1940s and TV in the 1950s. The weakness of the reboot came, primarily, in "Dragnet 1969" when there were too many police procedural episodes instead of going out to catch a criminal, and episodes where they stayed on (mostly) one set and talked-talked-talked. The worst of this was one where they spent the entire episode on one indoor set, arguing with a pro-drug/marijuana guy about the use of illegal drugs. The most boring half-hour show I ever sat through. The Dragnet reboot was, often, a very budget-conscious (meaning cheap) production.
 
Dick York played Darrin as a much more flustered and aggravated character due to the antics of all the supernatural types he had to deal with.

But there is also a real life component as York had to endure a lot of physical pain while on the show, which eventually forced him to give up the role.
I didn't know he was in pain earlier, and he wasn't in goof health years later, but he was happy because of all the interactions he had with fans.
 
The worst of this was one where they spent the entire episode on one indoor set, arguing with a pro-drug/marijuana guy about the use of illegal drugs. The most boring half-hour show I ever sat through. The Dragnet reboot was, often, a very budget-conscious (meaning cheap) production.
Is that the one with Liam Sullivan as Webb’s knock-off of Timothy Leary? I just watched the fourth season episode with Webb’s real life best friend Stacy Harris. Harris’ is busted for a string of auto and credit card thefts taking place while his character - “Barney Regal” - was on a speaking tour posing as a National Park ranger. Harris overwhelms the episode with endless heavy-handed dialogue about parks, rangers and the environment that sounded as if Webb copied it verbatim from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
 
The 1967-1970 reboot of Jack Webb's "Dragnet" was a success, due in no small part that Jack Webb reprised the roll of Sgt. Joe Friday who he had played on radio in the 1940s and TV in the 1950s. The weakness of the reboot came, primarily, in "Dragnet 1969" when there were too many police procedural episodes instead of going out to catch a criminal, and episodes where they stayed on (mostly) one set and talked-talked-talked. The worst of this was one where they spent the entire episode on one indoor set, arguing with a pro-drug/marijuana guy about the use of illegal drugs. The most boring half-hour show I ever sat through. The Dragnet reboot was, often, a very budget-conscious (meaning cheap) production.
Webb had "Adam-12" on the air at the same time (and network)-who seemed to take over the criminal-catching business.
 
I can't see a new Bewitched ever being produced, either as a comedy or drama. How in the world can a silly sitcom about a witch, her mortal husband, and her eccentric witch/warlock relatives and acquaintances be turned into a drama?
How could Fresh Prince be reworked? Yet Bel Air was very well done.


And who would star in the show? Bewitched was one of the comedies from the 1960s whose cast was close to perfect. Elizabeth Montgomery, Dick York (sorry, but Dick Sargent was a 3rd rate replacement, as necessary as it was), Agnes Moorehead, Paul Lynde, and Bernard Fox are irreplaceable.
No one in the audience an advertiser cares about gives a hoot about people who were around to watch the original.

Lots of ideas are kicked around and the Hollywood press dutifully report every idea that does or doesn’t ever see the light of day.
 
That sounds more like a continuation, rather than a reboot. Same with "The Connors". Another example of a recent continuation is "Justified: City Primeval". "Justified is one of my all-time favorite shows, and while the update replaced the neo-western Kentucky charm and humor with grittier Detroit noir, it was still pretty good.

A reboot would be like the newer version of "Hawaii Five-0", which was pretty decent in it's own way. It was it's own show, and didn't acknowledge the original. Unfortunately , it led to lesser reboots like "Magnum PI" and the truly awful "MacGyver" update.
Unless the reboot was set in a different part of the state, Harlan County is in far southeastern Kentucky, not western. They did make it appear in the original series that Lexington was closer to Harlan than it is, it's a very tough drive of well over 100 miles.
 
Unless the reboot was set in a different part of the state, Harlan County is in far southeastern Kentucky, not western. They did make it appear in the original series that Lexington was closer to Harlan than it is, it's a very tough drive of well over 100 miles.

By "western" I mean genre, not location. I'm shocked you couldn't figure that out.
 
By "western" I mean genre, not location. I'm shocked you couldn't figure that out.

When I see the words "western" and "Kentucky" together, I think of Bowling Green, Paducah, Owensboro, and so on, moreover, I don't think of Justified as a "western", nor of that genre. Harlan County is a long way from the prairie and the Badlands.
 
Reboots are always different than the original, shows like Roseanne/The Connors was different than the original and the new Night Court was not as funny as the original with only one original actor in a series role while another was just a guest throughout the series with maybe 3 or 4 episodes.
 


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