The golden age of TV that keeps on giving
’80s classics like Miami Vice back with a bang!
HERE’S a quick test of your 1980s TV show knowledge. Who uttered the following legendary catchphrases? ‘Quit your jibber jabber!’ and ‘You’ve got to know the rules before you can break ’em’. Well? None other than Mr T of The A Team and Sonny Crockett of Miami Vice. Or how about this easy one: ‘And hey – let’s be careful out there.’ That, of course, was Sergeant Phil Esterhaus on Hill Street Blues.
And now it looks like 2018 will be the year of the Eighties reboot. With the last few months having seen the resurrection of several iconic shows from ‘the decade that fashion forgot’, we are currently in the midst of a ‘TV moment’ where the older generation get to grouse about how sacred visions of their youth should be left untouched, as 20-somethings puzzle over why they were so popular in the first place.
As one of the undoubted heavyweight contenders in this 1980s love-in, the reappearance of Roseanne several decades after the final episode wrapped has seen original stars Roseanne Barr and John Goodman once again appropriating the same plaid family sofa in the same family home, now surrounded by a bunch of grown-up kids, and their problems.
SOME things never change – especially Roseanne’s inclination to call a spade a shovel – and now here it is updated for a Trump generation clutching the remote control. In fact, the US president was one of the first to name-check the show last month at an Ohio rally: ‘Look at her ratings,’ Trump declared. ‘They’re unbelievable, and it’s about us.’
The fact that her fictional on-screen persona mirrors Roseanne’s real-life support for Trump only added spice to the mix – especially as the pilot episode did best in Oklahoma, Ohio and Missouri, all states Trump won in the 2016 presidential election. ‘He’s just happy for me,’ she explained of her longtime friendship with the president. ‘I’ve known him for many years, and he’s done a lot of nice things for me.’
In a show that espouses socalled ‘down home values’, another episode took a sideways swipe at Hillary Clinton when Roseanne’s sister greets her with: ‘What’s up, deplorable?’ – echoing the Democratic contender’s infamous description of Trump supporters.
‘Your generation made everything so PC,’ Roseanne tells her daughter at another point. ‘Instead of spanking your kids, you tell them to go over there and think about what they did wrong. You know what they’re thinking? I can’t believe this loser isn’t spanking me.’ With a colossal 25million viewers having tuned in to watch the Roseanne premiere, it seems certain that we’ll be getting another season of such parental wisdom again in 2019.
While not broadcast in the Eighties, another comedy heavyweight from the past, Will & Grace, has also found a willing audience amongst the millennials of 2018. Having just wrapped its reboot series, the same stars (all of whom still look amazingly youthful – but maybe that’s down to the $250,000 per episode they received) are once again in the same setting – an upmarket Manhattan apartment shared by gay lawyer Will and his interior designer gal pal, Grace. Add in flamboyant actor Jack and brassy personal assistant Karen for a re-run of their trademark sexual puns, observational humour and political asides. And proving that that the new series can carry heavier themes, an episode entitled ‘Grandpa Jack’ saw the actor discover he has a gay grandson, whose parents are Bible-bashing homophobes. Tricky situation, but one that ended well. Having generated respectable viewing figures, this comedy quartet will also return to the small screen in 2019.
Away from comedy, law and disorder continue to be another solid foundation of the television schedules. Almost 30 years to the month, May 1988, two of the most beloved crime series of all time bade tearful farewells – Magnum, P.I. and Cagney & Lacey.
Three decades later, both iconic series are deep in reboot territory, with Jay Hernandez as the titular private eye made famous by Tom Selleck. Hernandez will play a demobbed Navy SEAL back from service in Afghanistan, and who repurposes his specialist skills as a private investigator.
With original Cagney & Lacey duo Sharon Gless and Tyne Daly now in their 70s, their roles are taken by Sarah Drew and Michelle Hurd. Gless offered this advice on the reboot: ‘Cagney & Lacey was never about cops and packing a rod. It was about the feelings of those two women, and I hope the new actresses are allowed to find that.’ Time will tell.
Miami Vice is another series due to get the makeover treatment. The Florida-based crime drama that ran from 1984 to 1990 starring Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas as Crockett and Tubbs still lingers in the memory for its pastel wardrobe, complete with jacket sleeves pulled up to the elbow. Tackling the cocaine boom of the 1980s, it was perfect timing for its era, and it remains to be seen what the new version, produced by Vin Diesel from the Fast & Furious movie franchise, will do with it. Plenty of gas-guzzling supercars would be my guess.
IN this era of political discord and journalistic challenge, one of the most eagerly-awaited 1980s TV reboots is Murphy Brown, the much-loved and often-controversial investigative journalist and FYI news show anchor which aired for ten seasons from 1988.
With an older, but no less sassy, Candice Bergen once again in the title role alongside many of the old cast, we are promised a show perfect for the times we live in given, as the show’s promotional spiel says, ‘the current state of cable news, social media, fake news, and a very different political and cultural climate’.
Bergen cropped up as an Emmy winner practically every season – so much so that she ended up taking her name out of consideration because ‘I’m not the only person that makes this such a winning show’.
One has to wonder what popular shows from Irish TV of the 1980s would find a similarly enthused audience today? Could a reboot of Scratch Saturday be a winner once again with music, videos, youth issues and host Andy Ruane’s catchphrase: ‘Like it, love it?’ Mmm, perhaps not.
The early Eighties also saw two of RTÉ’s most successful dramas – The Ballroom Of Romance and The Year Of The French – adapted from novels by William Trevor and Thomas Flanagan. With the mastery offered by digital production nowadays, could these classics be bettered or should they be left well alone? It would be interesting to see a modern-day take.
One of the most prominent amongst RTÉ’s output was, of course, Glenroe, the rural drama serial first broadcast in September 1983.
Starring Joe Lynch and Mick Lally as father and son Dinny and Miley, it gave rise to a host of rural catchphrases that quickly passed into popular parlance – most especially ‘Well, holy God!’
Tempting as it might be to resurrect this classic, one unavoidable fact remains – Dinny and Miley are irreplaceable. Period.