If you visited Las Vegas
this year, you may have seen some of these shows playing at various resorts on
and off the Strip:
The Australian Bee Gees
MJ Live: Michael Jackson
Tribute Concert
Bruce in the USA: Bruce
Springsteen Tribute
Purple Reign: The Prince
Tribute Show
Abba: The Concert – a
Tribute to Abba
Wanted: A Tribute to Bon
Jovi
Jay White is America’s
Diamond: Honoring Neil Diamond
There were more, but you
get the idea.
When I moved to Las Vegas
back in 1982, the only tribute show that drew an audience featured an Elvis
impersonator. But today, it seems there is a much greater interest in
celebrating the music of previous generations.
So I can’t help but wonder:
Could the same thing happen with television shows?
Classic shows are already
revisited in myriad ways. There have been parodies, like The Rerun Show (2002) and The Real Live Brady Bunch stage show. We’ve also had a wave of (mostly
lousy) feature film adaptations, where the original series is a starting point
from which to take the concept into new territory.
Remakes? Tim Daly headlined
a new version of The Fugitive in
2000. Family Affair was revived in
2002 with Gary Cole as Bill Davis and Tim Curry as Mr. French, and Charlie’s Angels returned to television
in 2011. None of these attempts were successful. New takes on Dragnet and The Bionic Woman also flopped. The new Dallas had its moments. The new Dynasty
did not.
More recently we’ve had
something that comes closer to a true continuation of a classic series, with
the new episodes of Roseanne and Will and Grace now airing, and more Murphy Brown coming soon. Ratings have
been very impressive, suggesting audiences are glad to be reunited with TV
characters they first met decades ago.
So would audiences be
equally happy to spend more time with Ann Marie and Don Hollinger, or James
West and Artemus Gordon, or the Cartwright family?
There are obvious reasons
why these projects could not be attempted with the original stars. But if you carefully and respectfully recast the roles, reproduce every other aspect of the original show, and
resist any urge to "re-imagine," "update" or "modify," would that result in a successful revival? If the right tone was captured would there be an
audience for new episodes of Gunsmoke
or Mannix, I Dream of Jeannie or Father
Knows Best, Perry Mason or The Man From UNCLE?
I think so – if the
new episodes stayed true to what made the source material successful, with no
self-awareness, no casting or scripts based on 21st century
sensibilities, and no winking at the audience. The only goal should be not to
remake but to revive, with as much authenticity and attention to detail as
possible.
Think about The Brady Bunch Movie (yes, I know, I
always come back to The Brady Bunch).
While that project had its own satriric slant on the material, consider the
possibilities of putting a lookalike cast like that one into a new 30-minute
script with the kind of plot viewers came to expect from the series, and
without exaggerating aspects of their characters for comic effect. Would the
result be close enough to the actual show to satisfy fans?
Since the objective is to
produce new episodes that would fit comfortably into the series’ original runs,
that requires setting them in the same era; so no cell phone for Joe Mannix, no
GPS for Bo and Luke Duke, no Chip and Ernie Douglas doing homework on a
computer. And no updated wardrobe for Mike Brady.
Again, would it succeed? Could
a sincere attempt to write, produce and perform new episodes of old shows capture
enough of the flavor of the originals – or would the hurdle of accepting a new
cast in iconic roles be too great to overcome?
I think it would work. And
I think the ratings success of networks like MeTV proves there is an audience
that would embrace a continuation of shows that ended decades ago. I also
believe there is an audience eager to have more family-friendly viewing
options, and most of the series from the Comfort TV era fit into that category.
There is another option for
reviving classics, and that is through the same technology that will soon be
used to bring Marilyn Monroe back for a new movie about her life. Today’s CGI
can create digital avatars of characters as they appeared in a show from 50
years ago. Voices? Those can be recreated as well. Many films now combine
practical sets with digital effects, and most viewers can’t tell where the real
parts of a frame stop and the CGI starts.
Far too expensive to do for a TV series now, but there was a time when videocassette recorders were cutting-edge technology that cost $1,500.
I’m not saying it might
happen for classic TV shows – I’m saying it absolutely will happen. And I for
one cannot wait.
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