Stephanie Zimbalist as Laura Holt, Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele
Just in time for Throwback Thursday comes news that NBC plans to re-boot the popular ’80s detective show Remington Steele. As a comedy.
The show, which launched the career of Pierce Brosnan — and, to a lesser extent, Stephanie Zimbalist — was originally an hour-long drama that was a blend of crime procedural and romance. Its premise involved a private investigator, Laura Holt (Zimbalist), who hires a mysterious character named Remington Steele (played with dashing brio by Brosnan), to act as a public face of her agency to lure clients unwilling to work with a female detective.
Sparks flew between the two leads from the very first episode — it was after five seasons of sexual tension that Holt and Steele got together in the series finale. Now, Deadline reports that the re-booted show will follow Olivia Holt, the daughter of Steele and Laura Holt, as she reopens her parents’ famed detective agency, 30 years after the end of Remington Steele.
The original show, which aired from 1982 to 1987 on NBC, was a huge hit. It is credited for the rash of other shows that followed it with similar storylines, including Moonlighting, which starred Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis as detectives with an undercurrent of romantic attraction.
The re-boot shrinks the format to a primetime palatable half hour comedy. Jay Scherick (Spin City, The Smurfs) and David Ronn (Zookeeper, Spin City) are writing the script. Ruben Fleischer, whose credits include films Gangster Squad and Zombieland along with a few memorable episodes of Between Two Ferns, is set to direct the project.
While casting for the show has not been announced, one can only hope that Brosnan has sufficiently recovered from being the most under-rated James Bond in James Bond history, to agree to a cameo on the show.
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