JamesG
01-13-2010, 08:40 PM
Why Studios Keep Cranking Out TV Remakes, Despite the Flops
By BILL CARTER
Published: December 27, 2009
In the fall of 2000 all the buzz in the television business was about a new drama on CBS on Friday night.
Not “CSI” — that had no buzz at all. All it had was ratings. No, the buzz that fall was about the remake of “The Fugitive,” the classic innocent-man-on-the-run series from the 1960s.
The redo seemed a can’t-miss idea. But it lasted 23 episodes.
And then there was “Bionic Woman.”
The NBC remake in 2007 of that sci-fi chestnut from the 1970s started out as the hottest new show of that fall season — and was gone after all of nine episodes.
There might be a lesson in there somewhere, but you would not know it from looking at the development lists at three networks this winter.
Among the most prominent projects under consideration as new series next fall are these familiar names: “The Rockford Files” on NBC; “Charlie’s Angels” on ABC; and “Hawaii Five-O” on CBS.
All of the projects were announced with some fanfare by their networks, though the program creators and top network entertainment executives were reluctant to discuss any specifics about the new versions yet, saying they were still in the writing stages.
But the network executives expressed genuine excitement about the possibilities for the projects.
It is easy to understand why. “It’s a good idea to try,” said Warren Littlefield, who was the top programmer at NBC and is now an independent producer. “Movies have proved you can do well with a presold concept.”
That is another way of saying it is only natural to turn to familiar titles because they attract attention. The question is whether the series that result will attract viewers.
The track record does more than suggest not: it screams not. In the history of network television, no remake of a previous hit series has ever become a hit itself on network television.
Plenty have been tried. In recent years there have been efforts to revive both “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place” on the CW network. No one would claim either approaches the success of their predecessors, or even passable hit status.
NBC created a splash when it brought back “Knight Rider” — featuring a talking car — as a two-hour movie in 2008, but a series version later that year hit the skids quickly.
Earlier in the decade the highly successful “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf tried a remake of the hoary classic “Dragnet” and barely made it through one season. (Who remembers that Ed O’Neill played Joe Friday and that one of the co-stars was Eva Longoria?)
How many people could pass a quiz on who replaced Rod Serling as host of UPN’s 2002 version of “The Twilight Zone”? (Forest Whitaker, actually.)
Digging through the files of series past, one could perhaps make an argument for some shows spawned from original hits. “Star Trek,” of course, gave birth to four separate series, but those were all spinoffs. They were not remakes of the original with the same characters.
All of those characters appeared instead in a series of theatrical movies, where television remakes have been far more successful: “Mission: Impossible,” “Get Smart,” “The Addams Family” and “The Brady Bunch,” to name a few.
“Battlestar Galactica,” a flop on ABC in 1978 (21 episodes), returned to a more favorable reception on the Syfy network in 2004, but that was on cable, not broadcast television.
“Dragnet” itself looks like a potential outlier. It started as a radio series and made it to television in 1951. That run ended in 1959.
But “Dragnet” came back in 1967 and was again a success. That would seem to qualify it as a remake hit.
But the second show was less remake than revival: It still starred Jack Webb playing Joe Friday with the same ominous theme music and intro about names being changed to protect the innocent.
The familiar titles on the current development slates are true remakes:
“Charlie’s Angels” will star three new actresses as young women who are knockouts in looks and martial arts
“Hawaii Five-O” is still expected to be led by a no-nonsense type named McGarrett (and maybe even backed by a young aide named Danno);
and “The Rockford Files” will inevitably feature a detective named Jim Rockford.
Perhaps more important for that show is that it will also feature a creator with one of the best recent résumés in television.
“Rockford” is being written by David Shore, the chief creative force behind the hit drama “House.” Mr. Shore has said that “Rockford” was one of his favorite shows growing up and that he hopes to find a way to replicate its mixture of comedy and action.
But replicating a star on the level of James Garner, who played Rockford, may prove more challenging.
Mr. Littlefield said having a talent like Mr. Shore running the show would be a great advantage to a new “Rockford,” but he added, “I don’t think there are many gumshoe detectives around anymore, so the key will be how they reinvent the character.”
“Hawaii Five-O” is being created by the team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who wrote the scripts for the most recent “Star Trek” movie as well as the two “Transformers” films.
The issue of how much to remake and how much to reinvent has dogged previous efforts at bringing back familiar shows and characters.
Fans and those who merely have heard of the old hits have tended to turn up for the initial episodes (and for two hours’ worth of a movie rendering), but have not stayed around once they got a whiff of what the new version was really like.
“The identity of a hit TV series is so intimately tied to the original stars, style and attitude that made it a hit in the first place that any deviation from that creates a real sense of aesthetic dissonance,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.
“This may be one case where an established brand is more a liability than an asset. In television, it’s a much safer approach to rip off an old idea than to try to remake one. It’s a perfectly plausible plan to develop a new TV show about three beautiful women fighting crime in fabulous clothes; maybe not such a good idea to call it ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ ”
Mr. Littlefield said that the woeful track record of previous remakes should not discourage network programmers from continuing to buy projects based on old hits. “But there has to be a series there,” he said. “It can’t be like a movie. You can’t trick them.”
Mr. Littlefield suggested a formula that could work: “At the risk of being oversimplistic: it also has to be good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/business/media/28remakes.html
By BILL CARTER
Published: December 27, 2009
In the fall of 2000 all the buzz in the television business was about a new drama on CBS on Friday night.
Not “CSI” — that had no buzz at all. All it had was ratings. No, the buzz that fall was about the remake of “The Fugitive,” the classic innocent-man-on-the-run series from the 1960s.
The redo seemed a can’t-miss idea. But it lasted 23 episodes.
And then there was “Bionic Woman.”
The NBC remake in 2007 of that sci-fi chestnut from the 1970s started out as the hottest new show of that fall season — and was gone after all of nine episodes.
There might be a lesson in there somewhere, but you would not know it from looking at the development lists at three networks this winter.
Among the most prominent projects under consideration as new series next fall are these familiar names: “The Rockford Files” on NBC; “Charlie’s Angels” on ABC; and “Hawaii Five-O” on CBS.
All of the projects were announced with some fanfare by their networks, though the program creators and top network entertainment executives were reluctant to discuss any specifics about the new versions yet, saying they were still in the writing stages.
But the network executives expressed genuine excitement about the possibilities for the projects.
It is easy to understand why. “It’s a good idea to try,” said Warren Littlefield, who was the top programmer at NBC and is now an independent producer. “Movies have proved you can do well with a presold concept.”
That is another way of saying it is only natural to turn to familiar titles because they attract attention. The question is whether the series that result will attract viewers.
The track record does more than suggest not: it screams not. In the history of network television, no remake of a previous hit series has ever become a hit itself on network television.
Plenty have been tried. In recent years there have been efforts to revive both “Beverly Hills 90210” and “Melrose Place” on the CW network. No one would claim either approaches the success of their predecessors, or even passable hit status.
NBC created a splash when it brought back “Knight Rider” — featuring a talking car — as a two-hour movie in 2008, but a series version later that year hit the skids quickly.
Earlier in the decade the highly successful “Law & Order” producer Dick Wolf tried a remake of the hoary classic “Dragnet” and barely made it through one season. (Who remembers that Ed O’Neill played Joe Friday and that one of the co-stars was Eva Longoria?)
How many people could pass a quiz on who replaced Rod Serling as host of UPN’s 2002 version of “The Twilight Zone”? (Forest Whitaker, actually.)
Digging through the files of series past, one could perhaps make an argument for some shows spawned from original hits. “Star Trek,” of course, gave birth to four separate series, but those were all spinoffs. They were not remakes of the original with the same characters.
All of those characters appeared instead in a series of theatrical movies, where television remakes have been far more successful: “Mission: Impossible,” “Get Smart,” “The Addams Family” and “The Brady Bunch,” to name a few.
“Battlestar Galactica,” a flop on ABC in 1978 (21 episodes), returned to a more favorable reception on the Syfy network in 2004, but that was on cable, not broadcast television.
“Dragnet” itself looks like a potential outlier. It started as a radio series and made it to television in 1951. That run ended in 1959.
But “Dragnet” came back in 1967 and was again a success. That would seem to qualify it as a remake hit.
But the second show was less remake than revival: It still starred Jack Webb playing Joe Friday with the same ominous theme music and intro about names being changed to protect the innocent.
The familiar titles on the current development slates are true remakes:
“Charlie’s Angels” will star three new actresses as young women who are knockouts in looks and martial arts
“Hawaii Five-O” is still expected to be led by a no-nonsense type named McGarrett (and maybe even backed by a young aide named Danno);
and “The Rockford Files” will inevitably feature a detective named Jim Rockford.
Perhaps more important for that show is that it will also feature a creator with one of the best recent résumés in television.
“Rockford” is being written by David Shore, the chief creative force behind the hit drama “House.” Mr. Shore has said that “Rockford” was one of his favorite shows growing up and that he hopes to find a way to replicate its mixture of comedy and action.
But replicating a star on the level of James Garner, who played Rockford, may prove more challenging.
Mr. Littlefield said having a talent like Mr. Shore running the show would be a great advantage to a new “Rockford,” but he added, “I don’t think there are many gumshoe detectives around anymore, so the key will be how they reinvent the character.”
“Hawaii Five-O” is being created by the team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who wrote the scripts for the most recent “Star Trek” movie as well as the two “Transformers” films.
The issue of how much to remake and how much to reinvent has dogged previous efforts at bringing back familiar shows and characters.
Fans and those who merely have heard of the old hits have tended to turn up for the initial episodes (and for two hours’ worth of a movie rendering), but have not stayed around once they got a whiff of what the new version was really like.
“The identity of a hit TV series is so intimately tied to the original stars, style and attitude that made it a hit in the first place that any deviation from that creates a real sense of aesthetic dissonance,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University.
“This may be one case where an established brand is more a liability than an asset. In television, it’s a much safer approach to rip off an old idea than to try to remake one. It’s a perfectly plausible plan to develop a new TV show about three beautiful women fighting crime in fabulous clothes; maybe not such a good idea to call it ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ ”
Mr. Littlefield said that the woeful track record of previous remakes should not discourage network programmers from continuing to buy projects based on old hits. “But there has to be a series there,” he said. “It can’t be like a movie. You can’t trick them.”
Mr. Littlefield suggested a formula that could work: “At the risk of being oversimplistic: it also has to be good.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/business/media/28remakes.html