16 Bad TV Shows Adapted From Movies

[TMC]

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MTV is unveiling its new series based on the Michael J. Fox ‘80s flick
Teen Wolf. From an unknown Sandra Bullock in the Working Girl spin-off
to the failed Ferris Bueller series with Jennifer Aniston, see more
films butchered by the tube.

TEEN WOLF (2011-TBD)

Long before The Twilight Saga swoon-worthy, Michael J. Fox starred in
the 1985 hit Teen Wolf, about 17-year-old high school basketball player
Scott who uses his newfound shape-shifting abilities to become the star
of the team. Although the movie did spawn a 1987 sequel (starring Jason
Bateman as Scott’s cousin) and a short-lived animated series that same
year, it’s now seeing new life with an MTV series by the same name about
a lacrosse-playing outsider turned werewolf (Tyler Posey). This time,
Teen Wolf is less of a hairy heroic comedy and more of an attempt at a
dramatic thriller. Reviews have been lackluster thus far, but MTV’s new
head of programming has faith. “We've really taken the wolf and done a
deep dive into the mythology,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “The
series is a total reimagination of the ’80s movie.” But we liked Scott
as a tinier Chewbacca lupine look-alike who could slam dunk in a
sweatband… not the brooding Taylor Lautner wannabe.

WORKING GIRL (1990-1990)

Melanie Griffith’s hair in Working Girl—the 1988 romantic comedy about
Staten Island secretary Tess McGill working on Wall Street in an attempt
to move up in the world—is legendary. Besides the height of her perm,
the film, co-starring Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver, and Alec Baldwin,
also earned Griffith an Oscar nomination and became a box office hit,
netting $103 million worldwide. Its success led to a 1990 TV adaptation
on NBC, starring a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock as Griffith’s character, a
role that originally went to The Facts of Life’s Nancy McKeon, who was
fired from the pilot. The transition to the smaller screen was anything
but smooth. Entertainment Weekly gave it a D, saying it was “shockingly
low in laughs” and that the “rhythms of this comedy are all wrong.” The
Working Girl series was canceled after eight of its 12 episodes aired.
Perhaps Bullock’s hair just wasn’t big enough.

FERRIS BUELLER (1990-1991)

“Life moves pretty fast,” Matthew Broderick famously explained as the
title character in John Hughes’ 1986 coming-of-age comedy Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off. “If you don't stop and look around once in a while,
you could miss it.” And it would have been easy to miss the 1990 NBC
comedy series based on the film, starring eventual Diagnosis: Murder
star Charlie Schlatter as Ferris and a then-unknown Jennifer Aniston as
Ferris’ sister Jeannine, who Dirty Dancing’s Jennifer Grey played in the
original film. “It's television. You know, it's just fun,” Aniston told
Entertainment Tonight at the time of its controversial truancy plot.
“Hopefully people will just take it with a grain of salt and enjoy it,
and not think, 'Oh, kids are going to watch this and they're going to
cut school.'" The series Ferris Bueller depicted the “real life” people
upon which Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was based, but the approach wasn’t
nearly as successful as the film, which was one of the top grossing
movies of the year. The series wound up on USA Today’s and The New York
Times’ worst TV of 1990 lists and was canceled after one season.

MY BIG FAT GREEK LIFE (2003-2003)

The year after Nia Vardalos’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding became the sleeper
hit of the decade, bringing in a whopping $241.4 million in North
America, CBS turned it into a post-nuptial series called My Big Fat
Greek Life. With a new leading man (her film co-star John Corbett of Sex
and the City was signed on to another series at the time) and a new
first name (from Toula to Nia), Vardalos brought her entire original
cast to the small screen with the notable exception of Corbett. But with
the wedding and honeymoon over, so was the story’s success. Considering
Variety said the show “should be silenced” and Entertainment Weekly
called it “a big fat bummer,” it was not surprising that My Big Fat
Greek Life was canceled after its seven-episode first season.

DELTA HOUSE (1979-1979)

National Lampoon’s Animal House not only launched the gross-out genre
with its 1978 debut, but it became one of the most profitable films of
all time in the process, considering its mere $2.7 million budget. In an
attempt to keep the momentum going on the fictional Faber College’s
Delta Tau Chi fraternity, ABC launched a half-hour sitcom called Delta
House. Though John Vernon reprised his role as Faber’s Dean Wormer as
did some of the other film’s cast members, the three screenwriters
signed on to write the pilot, and a 20-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer as
“The Bombshell,” Animal House’s original raunchy humor didn’t make it
past Standards and Practices. Plus, the lack of John Belushi’s
prototypical collegiate degenerate “Bluto” could not be overlooked; they
instead had Josh Mostrel play his brother “Blotto” who failed to follow
in his footsteps. Delta House’s producers were reportedly constantly at
odds with the network and the show failed to make it past its first
season.

BABY TALK (1991-1992)

Bruce Willis gave the adorably verbose Mikey a voice in the 1989 hit
Look Who’s Talking and in its 1990 sequel Look Who’s Talking Too. But
director Amy Heckerling (whose films Fast Times at Ridgemont High and
Clueless also had TV spin-offs) pushed her luck with an ABC sitcom based
on the series called Baby Talk in the spring of 1991. The show went back
to the premise of the first film with New York single mom Maggie
(Kirstie Alley in the original) on the hunt to find a man while her
3-month-old Mikey’s thoughts are articulated via voiceover. Heckerling
created new characters for the series—most notably George Clooney’s Joe,
a construction worker in Maggie’s building—and hired the beloved
housekeeper of Who’s the Boss?, Tony Danza, to speak for Mikey. But the
series went through three Maggies—Connie Sellecca (The Greatest American
Hero), Julia Duffy (Newhart), and Mary Page Keller—and Scott Baio’s
James (portrayed by John Travolta in the film franchise) failed to work
on the small screen. A critics’ poll gave Baby Talk the dishonor of
“Worst Series on Television” in 1991 and it was canceled after two
seasons.

SERPICO (1976-1977)

Sidney Lumet’s 1973 film based on the true story of NYPD officer Frank
Serpico, who went undercover to expose corruption within the force, led
to a first Golden Globe for its star Al Pacino, plus three Academy Award
nominations. But when NBC transitioned Serpico to television, the
accolades did not flow. The Oscar-nominated film and series shared
little besides the central plot and Bridget Loves Bernie David Birney’s
performance in the role Pacino originated was lost in TV translation.
“The format designed for NBC takes most of Serpico’s superficial
characteristics and gingerly ignores the particulars of his situation,”
The New York Times reviewed. “Serpico is stuffed into a typical action
adventure format.” Apparently, TV viewers were tired of the
stereotypical format and missed Pacino’s flare--Serpico was canceled
just four months after it premiered.

CLUELESS (1996-1999)

“Cher” reached a new generation with Amy Heckerling’s 1995 teen
phenomenon Clueless, loosely based on the classic Jane Austen novel
Emma, but set in a spoiled high school in Beverly Hills, where nose jobs
are the norm and eating is not. The new classic became a sleeper hit
and, as Roger Ebert reviewed, “is aimed at teenagers, but like all good
comedies, it will appeal to anyone who has a sense of humor and an ear
for the ironic.” Though the movie launched the careers of Alicia
Silverstone (the young actress who played Cher Horowitz) and the late
Brittany Murphy (Cher’s newfound friend Tai), both declined to sign on
for ABC’s television adaptation, with the lead going to unknown student
Rachel Blanchard. Stacey Dash (the actress who played Dionne, Cher’s
best friend “because we both know what it's like for people to be
jealous of us”), Donald Faison (the Scrubs star who played her boyfriend
Murray), Elisa Donovan (the girls’ ginger-haired arch nemesis Amber) and
a few others transitioned to the tube, but the success did not. ABC
canceled the series after one season, but UPN picked it up for two more
seasons. Insert eye roll and accompanying “Whatever” hand signage here.

UNCLE BUCK (1990-1991)

Though they didn't have a scene together in John Hughes’ legendary
family film Home Alone, the late John Candy and burglar trickster
extraordinaire Macaulay Culkin teamed up in Hughes 1989 comedy Uncle
Buck about a deadbeat uncle (Candy) who watches his nieces and nephew
(Culkin) when his brother and sister-in-law have to go out of town
unexpectedly. The follow year, the movie was adapted for television on
CBS, a la another Hughes’ film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. This time, the
tale took a somber turn with Buck’s (little known comedian Kevin Meaney)
brother and sister-in-law passing away in a car accident and granting
him full custody of their three children. “Kevin is Candy-esque because
he's big," Uncle Buck's executive producer told People magazine, "even
though he's not nearly as big as Candy.” Apparently, size does matter
because Meaney failed to fill Candy’s shoes and the series was canceled
after one season.

The full list:
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[70s show watcher]

delta house and clueless were pretty good shows

[bencasey]

Bullock's hair wasn't big enough? What a joke. Melanie Griffith's entire reason for popularity was her big ass. That's what wasn't big enough on Bullock, not her hair.