This again?: A look at why reboots fail

Close your eyes. Rewind to the ’90s. The most popular sitcoms feature families full of dysfunction, but, deep down, also love. Will-they-won’t-theys help stretch plots out over years. It’s the age of the catchphrase (“How you doin’?”).

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Now, look around. Many of the same shows are back on screens. The characters may have aged or been replaced, the jokes re-packaged or updated, but they follow a familiar path, their nostalgic appeal underlined by retro sets, laugh tracks and original theme songs.

This year alone, That ’70s Show (1998-2006), Night Court (1984-92) and the Scooby-Doo gang (from the animated series Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!; 1969-70) have been revived.

Later this year, a reboot of Frasier (1993-2004), the popular series about the therapist-turned-radio host, is due. And Clone High (2002-03), an animated sci-fi teen drama based on the high-school lives of genetic clones of historical figures, will return, with some of the original characters (which included Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, Abraham Lincoln) and new ones such as Confucius, Christopher Columbus and Frida Kahlo.

Who’s checking the most boxes? So far, Night Court. The reboot swaps a magic-loving, unconventional criminal court judge for a young woman judge, revisits old gags, brings back petty criminals, ridiculous crimes and deadpan one-liners. It is neither as funny nor as consistent as the original, but it’s watchable.

Which is more than one can say for That ’90s Show, a lethargic effort that spends all its energy trying to invoke the popular original, an impossible task given its tired plot lines and flaccid writing. All it does is make one want to leave Point Place, Wisconsin, for good.

Which shows have done it best, and worst, in recent years? Take a look.

Muddled missions: A key motive of the reboot is to revive a once-popular series for new audiences, in a new age. Sadly, many efforts forget about or falter on that latter bit.

The new Velma, for instance, reimagines the beloved, bespectacled child detective from the Scooby-Doo series as a queer, South Asian misfit, which may have sounded like a good way to target young viewers and the now-grown fans of the original cartoon series.

But the animated show (launched in January, with Mindy Kaling as Velma’s voice, and as executive producer) is poorly scripted, full of dull monologues, and worst of all, the treatment of this character plays into unhealthy stereotypes of the sad, self-conscious brown girl, with jokes about her weight and “hairy gorilla arms” going unquestioned. The script even has her take a potshot at women calling out sexual harassers (“I spit the truth without a filter, like every comedian before #MeToo”).

Shows that have handled this kind of update far better include Doctor Who (1963-). William Hartnell was the first to play the Time Lord. Every Doctor after him, for decades, was a white man (Peter Capaldi, Matt Smith, David Tennant).

A refreshing change was made in 2017, with Jodie Whittaker cast as The Thirteenth Doctor. Her episodes of time-travel included interactions with real-world long-gone legends, as they all have, but in her five years in the role, and in subsequent seasons, more women were added to this list, including computer programmer Ada Lovelace, and a hint of queer romance between her and a Pakistani policewoman named Yasmin Khan.

Power politics: Bel-Air, the gritty 2022 retelling of the popular comedy Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990-96), charges stridently into issues of racial discrimination, building on an original that touched rather more gently upon issues of identity and class privilege. It too follows a popular but unruly boy named Will (Jabari Banks, wearing the same kind of sideways hat as Will Smith), who is sent off to live with his uncle, aunt and cousin Carlton in a neighbourhood seen as safer for him, in Los Angeles.

There, he finds that Carlton and he have very different approaches, when it comes to navigating their blackness. Carlton believes the best way to pursue his ambitions is to find ways to fit in, even if that means pretending that his white peers’ racist slurs don’t hurt. Will is determined to fight each one. Carlton’s sister Hilary, meanwhile, is no socialite this time but a struggling entrepreneur. Episodes touch upon discrimination, gang violence, police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, even the climate crisis.

Respect for the original: A good example of how not to create a remake, comes from a fictional show about just this. Episodes (2011-17) follows a writer-producer couple from England who have just won a BAFTA for their evocative, gentle comedy, Lyman’s Boys. Now Hollywood wants to remake it, as Pucks!.

The lead character, the elderly principal of a boys’ school, becomes a lustful middle-aged sports coach (Matt LeBlanc). Other sexy school staff are added. The plot is stretched thin to make room for more seasons. Chaos and tears ensue as the creators, Beverly and Sean Lincoln, collapse under the unfamiliarity and indifference of California.

LeBlanc plays an exaggerated version of himself, an actor still living off his phenomenal success on Friends. He is self-centered, disloyal, and not nearly as talented as the lead in the fictional British original. Episodes is tragi-comic, layered and makes for riveting viewing. Not for one second does one wish to see Pucks!. But Lyman’s Boys feels wistfully out of reach.

In the real world, Tim Burton’s Netflix series Wednesday (2022-) is a reboot that offers a witty and engaging take, this one on the life of the Addams family daughter. Now in her teens, some mild delinquency sees her expelled from her school of relatively regular children and enrolled in Nevermore Academy, a school for misfits. The show builds elegantly on the eccentricity and oddness of the source material (originally a cartoon strip created by Charles Addams for The New Yorker, in 1938, before all the movies and TV shows).

Now surrounded by werewolves, sirens, gorgons and vampires, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) struggles to carve out an identity that is separate from her family’s. Her toxic traits barely stand out any more, but on the flip side, she is building true friendships for the first time. The show offers a contemporary, evocative take on a classic, and a gentle, humorous reminder that coming of age is always hard, but there is a little comfort to be drawn from the fact that no childhood is perfect, and no one is really “normal”.