Last week CBS announced that it’s picking up a “Murphy Brown” revival with Candice Bergen, who starred in the original (airing for 10 seasons starting in 1988), back in the title role.
Days later in a head-spinning bit of news, CBS said it has plans to bring back yet two more ’80s-era shows — “Magnum P.I.” and “Cagney & Lacey” — both as reboots, with new casts and showrunners.
If this feels like an avalanche, you’re right — the revivals include “Will & Grace” and “Roseanne” already in the can with the original casts, and a multitude of reboots in the works: “Party of Five, “The Greatest American Hero,” “Charmed” and “Roswell.”
The most common (and exasperated!) response I’ve seen so far: Ugh, Hollywood has run out of ideas. But here’s what also jumps out: The creators of these original shows were white (and mostly male). The top-billed actors on these shows were white as well. It’s not hard to see the potential downsides to this in terms of who is getting opportunities now.
Or as Keah Brown, an entertainment writer and creator of the #DisabledAndCute hashtag, said on Twitter: “Instead of rebooting shows, why not try letting black and brown people share our ideas for brand new shows where we exist?”
At a time when white women and people of color are still seriously underrepresented in front of and behind the camera — and that’s also true for other marginalized communities: religion, sexuality, gender, disability — this trend does not bode well. Especially when it comes to revivals, which stick with the original actors.
I rang up Alvin Tillery, who is the director of Northwestern’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, and he is wary of this reliance on re-baked retro shows.
“It’s not necessarily a nefarious thing,” he said. “And my perspective as a diversity researcher is that I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with having shows that are about white people. Whites are still about 64 percent of the population — so even if two-thirds of the shows available were about white people, I think that would be fine.
“But the problem,” he said, “is when these executives are bringing back shows from a golden age that was typically an era when black people, Hispanics, indigenous people and women were subservient. I think if you’re rebooting these shows with people of color, that’s interesting. It’s edgier, it pushes the envelope. But what I would love to see are new stories.”
Tillery’s point about reboots (as opposed to revivals) is a good one — because they do offer space to rethink the original by simply hiring new people to create and star in the show. “The Greatest American Hero” has “Fresh Off the Boat” showrunner Nahnatchka Khan on board as executive producer, and the premise switches out the white guy at the show’s center with an Indian-American woman.
The high-octane CBS cop drama “S.W.A.T.” (which first aired in the ’70s) is actually a pretty good example of a reboot that doesn’t simply repackage the past. (Man, CBS really likes to bring old shows back to life; see also “Hawaii Five-0.”)
The new version of “S.W.A.T.” has been reimagined by co-creators Shawn Ryan and Aaron Rahsaan Thomas (the latter of whom is African-American). Shemar Moore stars as the head of a tactical team that includes an Asian man played by David Lim and a Latina (a woman! on the SWAT team! hallelujah!) played by Lina Esco. Their boss (Stephanie Sigman) is also a Latina.
The series is exactly what you’d expect from an adrenaline-fueled cop show featuring lots of weaponry and people dressed in black gear. But the fact that Moore has a starring vehicle, that Esco’s character is a rarity in her profession, that Thomas is the showrunner on a big network show — these things matter.
Looking back on the television shows of his youth, Thomas told the Los Angeles Times that there “weren’t enough dramas that were taking people of color seriously” and that it was important to him that this show have a writing and directing staff that includes women and people of color.
Here’s Thomas: “In the actual SWAT headquarters there are class photos. Rows of white faces until very recently when things became a little more diverse. There’s a meta message definitely in seeing a person of color promoted to a position of leadership on a show. Hopefully the show, in its own way, can be part of a conversation for a new generation.”
Another reboot that’s bucked the odds and works spectacularly well is “One Day at a Time” on Netflix, which updates the 1970s Norman Lear sitcom to the present with a Cuban-American family at its center, hitting that sweet spot of specific and universal all at once. (The second season premiered last week.)
“Obviously I wanted to do Latinos right,” said co-creator Gloria Calderon Kellett. “Growing up, I didn’t get to see that in a comedic setting on TV. And even now, there’s not a lot of multicamera comedies with Latino leads.”
So why go with a reboot?
Kellett was blunt: “The truth of the matter is, had I gone out that year and tried to sell that show without Norman Lear, we wouldn’t have been able to sell it. (Co-creator Mike Royce) and I would not have been able to say, ‘Hey, we want to do a multicam, but we want it to be sad a lot of the time too, and we want to do it in the style of Norman Lear’ — people would have just laughed at us. I think that we needed Norman and we’re so grateful to him because the moment you say you want to do a Norman Lear show and you’re doing it with Norman Lear, then people say: ‘Oh, OK!’ That’s why Netflix bought 13 episodes the first season. I wasn’t a big deal then, but they bought 13 because of Norman Lear.”
I asked if she had any concerns at the outset, about squeezing her ideas into an established template.
“I felt like I could do all these things making fun of my Cuban stuff, because I’m Cuban. But I was definitely worried about defending the little things. Now it’s great because it worked and I can look back and be like: Hey, remember when I went through that set and put the cans of Goya there and moved the Bustelo to where it would be — like, I walked through there and made that kitchen the way the kitchen would be (in a Cuban-American home). And they even had Tupperware at first and I said, ‘No, no, no — it’s got to be the recycled Country Crock container.’ These were things that I was a pain in the (rear) about, but then there’s a gazillion tweets about the Country Crock! People notice those things. It makes them feel seen. And what’s interesting about the Country Crock thing is that other immigrant families, not just Latinos, anyone who’s on a tight budget gets it.”
Marketability is a big factor. And a familiar title is as good of a hook as any.
“So many people have asked me, ‘Why didn’t you just make a show from scratch?’ ” Kellett said. “And I think networks are so afraid of creating new content, they need some reason to drop the cash and know that people are going to tune in. Because there’s 400 shows out there and to make any sort of splash, it’s hard. So part of me doesn’t blame them. I just hope that it means that they’ll take a moment to see if they can infuse it with something a little different and shake up the storytelling.”
Speaking of which, here’s a reboot idea I find intriguing: The ’90s family drama “Party of Five” originally centered on five siblings who raise themselves after their parents die in a car accident; the new version will focus on five siblings whose immigrant parents are suddenly deported back to Mexico. Now that’s a way to steer an old idea into something new.
By the way, there are a couple of old shows back in the pipeline that originally featured black cast members. One is a rumored revival of the ’90s sitcom “Martin.” As with all things Hollywood, who knows if that will happen. The other is a reboot of the ’70s action drama “Get Christie Love!” which ABC is eyeing with Kylie Bunbury (star of last year’s terrific but short-lived Fox baseball drama “Pitch”) as a CIA agent rooting out bad guys.
Li Lai is the founder of mediaversityreviews.com, which reviews TV shows and films with scores that reflect how inclusive a project is or isn’t. That’s true even of shows that are critically acclaimed. If they’re not inclusive? Low score.
Looking around at the TV landscape, here is what Lai had to say: “I think I take the long view with this. Lord knows I’m tired of reboots and I feel like this has got to run out of steam at some point. But I see why people are going ultra-nostalgia. Our country’s changing so fast, I understand the compulsion. So yeah, there should be ‘Will & Grace’ for people who want that — but I’m going to be watching things that are more progressive on LGBTQ issues.”
Overall, she said, “this feels kind of temporary because there’s no way we can continue to live in the ’80s and ’90s. People are going to grow up and start being nostalgic for the aughts. So that nostalgia, that’s never going to go away.
“I mean, I get it. Things are really kind of freaky right now, and if you want to hide in your childhood, that’s fine! I don’t want to take that away from people.”
That’s a smart observation — about the desire to mentally run away to what we at least perceive to be simpler times. And this is hardly the first time television has looked backward for comfort.
On the heels of the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the women’s movement, what show did ABC put on its schedule that would become a cultural touchstone and long-running hit? That would be “Happy Days,” with its 1950s setting and idealized portrait of well-mannered Midwestern life.
As always, everything old is new again.
nmetz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @Nina_Metz
