Question:What TV shows would not make it if they were made today as opposed to the 90s or 00s?
Let’s see:
- Friends – Six White New Yorkers sit around and whine about their lives. Set in a New York City which never existed, a series like it today would be quickly dismissed from the air by viewers, if it even made it past the pilot stage.
- Saved by The Bell – A teenaged sociopath runs a high school, and is apparently the object of a crush by his principal. Creepy and weird, and that would be even more obvious to modern audiences.
- The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – An adult former rapper portrays a high school kid who moves to California. That’s it. That premise was stretched out over six seasons, each increasingly unfunny. The fact that no other rapper has tried a similar series demonstrates that point better than I ever could.
- Seinfeld – Basically, a show where the lead was often the least funny member of the cast. Some of the themes would be funny in the 1990s, but really not “funny” now (Man hands, rhymes with Delores, the Soup Nazi, etc.). Wouldn’t be successful and the lack of similar series demonstrates that.
- Baywatch – Good looking semi-naked people running around the beach in slow motion. Lot’s of jiggle and beefcake, but almost no story whatsoever. Basically what you would get if you asked teenaged boys to write a television series.
Times and tastes change.
People forget that and they assume what they used to like will be popular to people in the future. They are often proven to be mistaken.
Baywatch
NOTE: The Fresh Prince has been “reimagined” as a streaming series titled Bel Air.
However the cast is entirely different, the tone is different, the lead isn’t as charismatic as Will Smith was, and the program is, frankly, a downer overall.