Rebooted TV lineup in store for this fall
Roughly a dozen shows coming to screens this fall are based on existing series and films, some of which stretch back decades.
Do not adjust your set: What’s on television may look more familiar than usual this fall.
The roster of recognizable names for the 2016-17 season goes beyond longtime TV "ixtures Matt LeBlanc and Kiefer Sutherland and includes roughly a dozen shows based on already existing series and films, some of which stretch back decades.
“Lethal Weapon,” “The Exorcist” and “Frequency” are just three of the shows coming to screens this fall that "irst appeared in theaters. One new series, CBS’ rebooted “MacGyver,” debuted on a different network more than 20 years ago.
Some of the reasoning is simple: In a TV landscape that’s more expansive and competitive than ever, it’s perceived as a far safer bet for networks to dip into the past and ask audiences to get reacquainted with stories they recognize than start from scratch with a new one.
The trend has expanded in recent years with the rise of streaming services.
For all its success with originals, including “Stranger Things,” “Orange Is the New Black” and “House of Cards,” Netflix has an open-door policy to rebooting or launching continuations of longgone TV series, including “Fuller House,” “Voltron” and “Gilmore Girls.” HBO is also getting into the reimagination business this fall with its update of the 1973 film “Westworld.”
Results have been typically uneven, but in some cases, these reboots can strike a chord among critics and audiences. The 1990 TV version of “Parenthood,” the 1989 "ilm by Ron Howard, was cancelled quickly. But a subsequent adaptation in 2010 lasted five years. In the late ’90s, Joss Whedon’s critically beloved “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” built a world over seven seasons that expanded into directions and spinoffs that reached well beyond the original 1992 film. The mid-’00s small-town highschool football drama “Friday Night Lights,” adapted from the 1990 book and 2004 film of the same name, may be the contemporary gold standard for film-to-television translations.
The new MacGyver, played by Lucas Till, is described as less of a lone wolf than Richard Dean Anderson’s original character, and modern technology plays more of a role than it did in the lo-fi ’80s series.
That said, the new iteration deviates from a running joke of not revealing MacGyver’s "irst name, which the original series upheld nearly to its conclusion.
“If you’re going to do a reboot of something or reimagination of something, you can’t hide the ball on things like that,” he said at the press tour. “Everybody knows his first name.” (It’s Angus.)
“We buy (intellectual properties) every year. I think they have just as good a shot of getting on (TV) as a show that doesn’t have a title that was well-known,” said CBS Entertainment President Glenn Geller after his executive session at the press tour.
“I don’t think you can judge a show just because of its title.”