Is It Really Ever a Good Idea to Revive an Old TV Show? Pretty Much Pop #13 Considers

An appalling num­ber of shows are now being con­tin­ued long after their deaths. Revivals (not to be con­fused with reboots) bring us back to the com­fort of old friends, who are now real­ly old. What can a revival’s suc­cess tell us about why the show was appeal­ing in the first place? Would­n’t you rather see a new work by the same cre­ative team than more of the same? Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an con­sid­er some suc­cess­es, fail­ures, and hypo­thet­i­cals.

We con­sid­er Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment, The Twi­light Zone, X‑Files, Twin Peaks, Will & Grace, Dead­wood, Full House, Gilmore Girls, Queer Eye, Doc­tor Who, Veron­i­ca Mars, and talk too much about The Brady Bunch and Alf.

Some arti­cles we looked at:

• “In Defense of TV Reboots and Revivals” by LaToya Fur­gu­son
• “TV Keeps Reboot­ing ‘90s Shows Because Every­thing Is Bad” by Orlana Schwindt
• “From Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment to Dead­wood to Veron­i­ca Mars, Fan­doms Keep Shows Com­ing Back From the Dead” by Noel Mur­ray
• “TV Reboots and Revivals” by Emi­ly Lon­geretta (a cur­rent list)
• “Revivals” at tvtropes.com

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.