My immediate reaction is to say no. But …<\/p>\n
… some reboots are successful. They fall into two categories:<\/p>\n
1. Shows that take the original premise, update it for modern tastes, and do something new and interesting with it. Battlestar Galactica<\/i> is an example of this. They ran with the original idea (a desperate survivor fleet of ships, fleeing robotic pursuers, seeking some distant salvation) and turned it from flashy Hollywood kitsch into gritty survival drama.<\/p>\n
2. Shows that could arguably stand on their own but get a boost from taking on the show and character names of the original, while really creating a new show that could have run just by itself. Hawaii 5-0<\/i> is the current example here; it bears next to no resemblance other than names and setting to the original, but it has survived several seasons on what it’s been able to do as an entertaining story.<\/p>\n
(H50 could have been called The Hawaiian Beat,<\/i> with lead characters named Joe Smith and Bob Brown, and told exactly the same story. There’s nothing about the show that is intrinsically the same as the Jack Lord version. But wearing the H50 names arguably gave it the initial boost to get people watching and thus get hooked. I might roll my eyes at the tactic, but it worked.)<\/p>\n
[Neither of the above necessarily encompass all my feelings about either show. But my own personal caveats aside, both were successful.]<\/p>\n
Either approach is respectable. Doing something new and exciting with traditional characters is an old tradition dating back to the first time someone told news stories about the gods and heroes of an old myth. Hell, 90% of Shakespeare falls under that category. Doing something new that you just slap the old name onto but still make a successful tale about also has a long tradition.<\/p>\n
Reboots that tend to fail are the ones that try to recapture the lightning — making a show that is “just like” the original but with new actors, a possible new setting, but no new vision. A lot of TV reboots that start with “The New …” fall into this category, and they almost universally fail, because people want continuity<\/i> but not an attempt to be identical.<\/i> Not only is the latter impossible, but it’s boring.<\/i><\/p>\n