Five Reasons Remakes Stink

Category: Opinion

A recent flop of a remake of a classic television series inspired this blog about five remakes that never should have been.

The Prisoner -- Patrick McGoohan created and starred in a 16-part show that, to this day, people are at a loss to categorize: was it drama? Science fiction? Mystery? Dry British comedy? Who cared, it was a masterpiece, one of the greatest television series in history. So, naturally, the legions of fans the original had made it rife for a remake. The 2009 A&E series owed far more to the original film Rollerball than the original Prisoner: a corporation controlling everything (remember that "corporate anthem" that played before the Rollerball games began?) to the point where Jonathan E....er...."Six" can see what's going on; as opposed to the mysterious nature of just who ran the Village ("that would be telling," was the reply when McGoohan's Number Six asked, "Who's side are you on?"). And, of course, it was all filmed with typical music video 0.0385 second-per-shot editing. One of the rovers from the original series should have headed this remake off at the pass.

The Electric Company -- the PBS show that taught kids to read in the 1970s was equally popular with older people because of its Vaudeville format. The remake is more episodic -- and boring. No J. Arthur Crank, no Rita Moreno yelling "Hey, you guyyyyyyyys!", no Morgan Freeman as Easy Reader, and no superb cameos (my favorite: after a cartoon featuring the joke about "there's a banana in your ear" with the reply, "I can't hear you, there's a banana in my ear," Lorne Greene popped in and said, "I can't hear you, there's a Bonanza in my ear!"). If the boy in "Love of Chair" (the first season lampoon of soap operas) had seen the remake, the script would have read, "The boy is throwing up."

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) -- speaking of ITC shows (the company that produced The Prisoner), another charming program from the British vaults was 1969's Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (which aired here in syndication in the mid-70s as My Partner the Ghost). The series rubbed out one of the main characters before the second commercial break (hence the "deceased" part), but fear not, Marty Hopkirk spent the rest of the 26 episodes as a ghost that only his private detective agency partner Jeff Randall could see. When the series was remade in the early 2000s it starred the British comedy team of Vic Reeves (as the ghost) and Bob Mortimer (as Jeff). The computer-generated special effects were a major improvement from the 1960s wire and pulleys to move objects (some of which were plainly visible in the scenes) and "Pepper's ghost" effects to make Marty walk through walls. The plots, however, were mostly rehashes of the original series -- and bad rehashes at that. To be fair, when the remake went for originality it showed definite promise; however, that was too few and too far between to keep fans of the original series and fans of Reeves & Mortimer interested for more than 13 episodes before it joined Marty Hopkirk in death.

AfterM*A*S*H -- M*A*S*H lasted about three seasons too long to begin with, so there was no way AfterM*A*S*H was going to relive the glory of the heyday of the legendary series. We really were ready to give the series up. Unfortunately, CBS didn't realize this until after they subjected us to this hunk of junk.

Burke's Law -- the original, starring the late Gene Barry, was one of the best TV series ever despite its absolute ridiculous plot (a millionaire police homicide captain today would make everyone yell "kickbacks!"). In the mid-90s this show was revived, this time with Barry as an octogenarian. Lightning did not land in the bottle the second time around, and it was wrong to think it would to begin with. Runner-up goes to Amos Burke, Secret Agent, which was ABC taking a very good thing -- and ruining it by trying to turn Burke's Law into something along the lines of "The Millionaire Police Homicide Captain from U.N.C.L.E."

And I'm going out on a limb here to add one that I am almost certain will be on this list this time next year:

The Green Hornet -- given the track record of TV shows that become movies, I am not holding my breath in anticipation of a masterpiece of this forthcoming (Christmas 2010) film version of the TV series. One of the great things about the television series (and the movie serials before it) was that Britt Reid, as a rich man, could afford gadgets that "regular folks" could not, things that gave him an edge in his crime fighting. It's the 21st century now, we all have the gadgets. Worst of all, the movie will not have what the TV series had that made it special: Bruce Lee.