Tenshot: Revisiting Ally McBeal

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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13 Responses

  1. Brandon Berg says:

    When I watched this in the original run, everyone seemed old. Now I’m older than almost all of the main cast.

    This sucks.Report

  2. Pinky says:

    What revivals / reboots have been successful?

    Immediate caveat: a lot of them have been designed to be 13-episode seasons for streaming channels, which tend to want eye-grabbing rather than long-running shows. So I guess I’m asking about shows that have been well-received by the public. The only one I can come up with is Battlestar Galactica, which I hear is aiming for a v3.

    No revival is ever going to be universally loved. What are the necessary ingredients for a good one? It probably varies by the source material. Generally I’d think a comedy needs most of the original cast, but a drama can have fewer or even none of the original actors. But that’s not quite right – family dramas may require the same family, for example.

    I’ve been hearing mostly positive things about the iCarly revival. The cast chemistry is back, and the story lines have matured, but the writing is current year politically correct and misses the right tone. (I never saw the original or revival.) It’s hard to see how Ally McBeal could duplicate its tone. It was garishly politically correct and garishly politically incorrect for its day. How would you do that today? It’d be possible, but you’d need a master’s hand.Report

    • Kolohe in reply to Pinky says:

      The Hawaii Five-O revival was successful (ran for ten? seasons), but was a somewhat different show than the Jack Lord version. Though a lot of that came down to how TV does ‘action’ in the ‘10s vs late 70s early 80s. (The new Magnum has also now been on for a while, but I don’t know how it’s characterization differs from the original other than the genderswapped Higgins)

      As far as I can tell, most of the other action revivals from the 70’s /80’s that have been made in the past 15 years (e.g. Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, MacGyver, heck, put Nikita on the list) have been not bad, but still pretty mediocre, and have limped along for a couple of seasons before cancelation.

      For that matter, nuBSG is basically also its own show, really just borrowing IP to make the Star Trek that Ron Moore always wanted to, but couldn’t.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Kolohe says:

        Does James Bond count?Report

      • Pinky in reply to Kolohe says:

        Hawaii Five-O is a great example.

        Movies are a different thing, I think. Or maybe they used to be. In the last 20 years, movies needed some built-in market to get studio funding, so they were more prone to reboots / remakes / rewhatevers. Maybe TV is headed that way. Or maybe it’s time to bury the TV/movie distinction. Point is, 25 years ago you could create new content anywhere, next year probably only on YouTube.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to Pinky says:

      The Arrested Development revival was dreadful. The conventional wisdom was that the first year suffered from not having the whole cast together, but the second year had that and was even worse.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Not enough Single Female Lawyer.Report