7 TV Reboots That Totally Missed The Point Of The Originals

The television reboot can be a tricky thing. On the one hand, it’s an opportunity to for a beloved older series to get a new life and reach a new audience thanks to fresh takes and new stories. On the other, it’s an opportunity for those fresh takes and new stories to completely squander the greatness of the shows they’re born from by somehow missing the thing that worked in the first place. And, unfortunately, there are quite a few reboots that manage to do just that, missing the mark and completely missing the point.

From classic comedies that came back as too-serious dramas, alternative universe origins that were too edgy for their own good, and refreshes of sci-fi classics that failed to evolve in any meaningful way, here are seven television reboots that completely missed what made their original series great in the first place.

7) Bel-Air

A reimagined take on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Bel-Air debuted in 2022 and it was apparent from the jump that the series was wildly different from the original. While the core conceit was the same, following Will Smith as he goes from the streets of West Philadelphia to the posh, gated mansions of Bel-Air when he’s sent to live with his aunt and uncle after encountering some trouble, just about everything else about the series was different. And therein was the problem.

While the idea of a drama exploring the core concept of the original Fresh Prince series isn’t bad on its face, Bel-Air missed what made Fresh Prince such a good series to begin with: its heart. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air used humor to tell its story and make some very important points about social issues. It was the juxtaposition of laughter versus uncomfortable topics that made the original great. Bel-Air was just too deeply serious to really work as a reboot.

6) MacGyver

The best thing about the original 1980s action series MacGyver was the titular character’s wild ingenuity. Portrayed by Richard Dean Anderson, MacGyver could solve just about any problem he encountered with pretty much no resources save for his Swiss Army knife. The character’s ingenuity was such a big part of the show that “macgyver” became part of the lexicon, a word to describe using simple solutions and existing resources to solve complicated problems. You simply can’t be MacGyver without macgyvering things.

Except, the 2016, Lucas Till-starring reboot kind of lost sight of that. The series failed to account for just how much technology had changed between the 1980s and 2016 which meant that the new MacGyver’s solutions felt kind of lackluster and not nearly as innovative as the original. It’s a case of the reboot failing to account for change — and ended up missing the point in the process.

5) Murphy Brown

Debuting in 1988, the original Murphy Brown was revolutionary. The series followed the titular investigative journalist as she returned to her job at the fictional newsmagazine FYI after a stint in rehab and while the series took on politics, at its core was about working professionals and their lives — particularly Murphy as she dealt with issues of sexism, parenthood, and society at large. The series tackled big storylines and controversies but always framed around its characters.

In 2018, the series returned, but the revival (yes, this is more a revival than a reboot) was in many ways a completely different series. Part of that is because the world was a very different place in 2018 than it was when the series originally ended in 1998, but a bigger part was that the new series leaned away from being character-driven and leaned a little too much into political commentary that felt more forced than anything the original ever delivered.

4) Velma

Some would argue that Velma isn’t a true reboot, as the series is more of an alternative universe origin story for Mystery Inc. but given that it is exactly that — an alternate origin for Mystery Inc. — we’re going to count it. The animated series debuted in 2023 and was immediately met with negative reviews from both critics and audiences and for a pretty good reason: Velma is absolutely nothing like Scooby-Doo.

Focusing on the human members of Mystery Inc., Velma didn’t include Scooby-Doo at all, the familiar human characters were presented in ways that they were pretty much unrecognizable as themselves (Shaggy goes by his legal name, for example) and the show was almost aggressively edgy. Part of the charm of Scooby-Doo is how campy and goofy it is and Velma entirely missed the mark.

3) Heroes Reborn

If we’re being very honest, the original Heroes missed its own point after the series’ first season so it’s probably not much of a surprise that the reboot, Heroes Reborn, missed the mark entirely as well. Debuting in 2015, Heroes Reborn was presented as being set to “reconnect with the basic elements of the show’s first season”, a season that saw regular people discover that they had extraordinary activities. However, that never really happened.

What made the part of the original Heroes work was that viewers were able to get emotionally invested in the characters and what they were facing. Heroes Reborn never establishes any such connection with the audiences, instead focusing more on the emergence of new “Evos” and the threat of a geomagnetic reversal that endangers the planet. Without an emotional core, Heroes Reborn didn’t work.

2) The Twilight Zone

The original The Twilight Zone is a corner stone of science fiction. One of the greatest television series of all time, the series was unique in its time for how it examined society and culture, all through a complex science fiction lens. It’s influence and legacy continues to have long reach even today.

And that is, in part, what the 2019 reboot missed. Developed by Simon Kinberg, Jordan Peele, and Marco Ramirez, this attempt to revive The Twilight Zone followed the original series’ format of taking on different topics that had larger implications all with unexpected, decidedly sci-fi twists but the issue is that where those sorts of things were groundbreaking for the original, they are rather run of the mill for the new one. It’s another case of not adapting for the times. Contemporary sci-fi anthology series, such as Black Mirror, were already doing much of what made The Twilight Zone so good when it first debuted with their own, contemporary turns. The new The Twilight Zone didn’t really try to be contemporary. It played it too close to the original and in doing so, missed the point.

1) Charmed

The CW’s 2018 Charmed reboot, on its own, wasn’t a bad show. If it had been established as its own YA fantasy drama involving witches, it would have been entirely fine. Instead, the Charmed reboot completely missed its mark by forcing a feminist approach and, in the process completely missed what made the original series so special: the natural, organic power of sisterhood.

One of the core elements of the original Charmed was that, while it ended up being a “feminist” series, that wasn’t the focus of the show. Instead, it was simply a show about three sisters discovering that they are the most powerful witches ever and what that looks like for their individual lives as well as their relationship as sisters. Sisterhood was the core of the series. That never really happened in the reboot. Without that, and the new Charmed was a very different series — and one that alienated fans of the original in the process.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!

5 More Sci-Fi Shows With Multiple Seasons That Are Great From Beginning to End