There’s no such thing as a second chance, sang the Lemonheads, but they didn’t work in television. Second chances abound in TV nowadays. NBC is bringing back Knight Rider; it’s already brought back American Gladiators; CBS is remaking Password; we’re in the middle of a new run of Battlestar Galactica; and ABC is going to take a second shot at Cupid, ten years after having canceled it the first time.
Of course, there are remakes and there are remakes. Gladiators is pretty much a straight-up redo, whereas BSG took a basic concept and applied an entirely different approach to it. And then there’s Cupid, an especially interesting kind of remake, because it suggests all sorts of possibilities to take a second shot at shows—EZ Streets, Freaks and Geeks—that maybe just came along a few years before their time.
You can pick any breed of do-over, but what TV show would you remake if you had the chance? I vote for Quark, with Richard Benjamin. TV needs a good sci-fi comedy.
Incidentally, I half suspect I used this discussion question once before, though I can’t find it in my archives. If I did—well, consider this a remake.