HOW MANY TIMES CAN THE SAME STORIES BE RETOLD?

There’s no such thing as a new idea, or so Mark Twain once said. And the writer’s words could not be truer when it comes to the world of entertainment, which seems to be stuck in an endless cycle of remakes, reboots and revivals. And while I’m totally OK with some updates if it’s been long enough since the last version ( Storm Boy) or if there’s a fresh spin to put on a story ( A Star Is Born), there are some tales that just don’t need to be told again.

I mean, how many times can we revisit the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, for example? In the past year, there have been new films rehashing those well-visited stories – and while The Kid Who Would Be King at least came at things from a brand new, modern-day angle, last year’s Robin Hood, starring Taron Egerton, was completely unnecessary since a) the outlaw’s tale has been told so many times already and b) it had only been eight years since the last completely unnecessary movie, starring Russell Crowe, hit cinemas.

And can we have a moratorium on any new projects depicting Sherlock Holmes? Between the Robert Downey Jr films, and TV’S Sherlock and Elementary, there has been no escaping the famous detective so far this century. (Let’s not even go there with Razzie Worst Picture winner Holmes & Watson.) There must be other characters from British literature we can bring to the screen instead of the same ones over and over and over again.

Or French literature. This week sees yet another adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables arrive on TV (starts Sun., Mar. 10 at 8.30pm; BBC First). Coming just six years after the Academy Award–winning film version of the musical, this British miniseries dispenses with the singing, which is good news for those still recovering from the numbers performed by Crowe (him again!), but it’s still a period piece that follows the same story many of us just watched.

Granted, it’s a very fine-looking period piece, with a great cast including Dominic West, Lily Collins and David Oyelowo, but surely there’s another literary classic that hasn’t had some sort of update in the past decade that could have done with one instead?

Or maybe not. Beloved books are being adapted with increased regularity. Books like Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, which was turned into a BBC series in 2017 and a (not very good) film in 2018. It’ll be back next summer in an all-star (Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Timothée Chalamet, Laura Dern) affair directed by Greta Gerwig. What next: new versions of the Harry Potter films? Surely it’s only a matter of (not very much) time. •