Who Shot JR? Who Cares?

Source: @HuffPostTV

#screenwriting #television #remakes

“Let me make one thing clear: I really liked the remake of Battlestar Galactica. Seriously, I did. OK? Now that that’s out of the way, here is this week’s hypothesis:

TV Remakes Are Bad Mojo.

It’s not that I think producing series that have already been made shows a lack of originality or ambition (which I do). It’s not that rehashing shows from the past reduces the chances for new; unique ideas to succeed (which it does). It’s not even that I intensely dislike almost all of the TV that has ever been remade (before you set your Tweet to stun, see the BSG comment above).

I claim that TV Remakes are bad juju, because I have done the research, and it is simply, conclusively, unquestionably, factually true. Skeptical?  See the chart laying out the historical success/failure rate of TV Remakes, show by show.

Notes: I have run the data two ways — with and without Smallville. With Smallville, the data is terrible. However, unlike Lois & Clark, Smallville is not really a remake of The Adventures of Superman — it’s an extension of the Comic Book and Film franchise. Without Smallville in the calculation, the results are even more dire; 20 percent worse, in fact.

The only other valid successes on the list are Battlestar and Outer Limits. The first was so well made it eradicates all memory of the original, and is therefore an exception. The latter was both syndicated and Canadian — therefore, irrelevant……”