The bionic man is tied up in the one thing even Kung Fu grip can’t break: legal red tape. Universal and Miramax (or in other versions of the story, Universal and Dimension, or Universal and Martin Caidin) can’t agree who gets the big slice of the pie, so there’s no pie for anyone. I can’t think of another property from that era that would do so well as DVD releases or a revival or even a big screen film. The built-in nostalgia audience guarantees income, and the modern tech would make the effects AWESOME (in 70s speak). (I also feel that in a world where they can actually sell Charles in Charge DVDs, anything will sell.)
I’ve heard people argue they would have to change the title, because six million dollars isn’t what it used to be; but tech follows a different cost curve. The cell phone in your pocket today would’ve cost a lot more than six million in 1973. Indeed, it wouldn’t have been available at any price. So leave the title alone. Universal, Miramax, whoever… It’s time to bring Steve Austin back. We can rebuild him, you know we can…
If they bring him back, why don’t they use the title from the actual Martin Caidin book: “Cyborg.” I read the book long before Farrah Fawcett’s husband got the job, and it’s a pretty gritty book compared to the TV show. I wouldn’t mind seeing something done more like the book, which dug quite a bit deeper into the psychological impact of melding man and machine.
Oh, it screams for a Galactica style remake, and Caidin’s books (there were four, I think) make a great start. Caidin’s Steve Austin was a very complex anti-hero.
I don’t think you can remake a 70s-era story today without changing the tone. Audience tastes and expectations have changed. They might succeed with The Rockford Files remake if they left the tone alone. Jim Rockford was a different sort of hero from the usual 70s protagonist. But as much as I would enjoy the nostalgia of a DVD release, I doubt I could sit still for the same Six Million Dollar Man stories if released new today. Even as juvenile fare, they’re dated. That’s why so many of the TV remakes from that era are done as comedies (albeit bad comedies).
But for brand recognition, you have to keep the original title. Besides, Van Damme already did a film called “Cyborg”, and that would only add to the confusion.
Maybe so.. I loved “The Rockford Files.” I loved that when Jim Rockford punched a bad guy in the face, he’d hop around holding his hand for a minute afterwards. I loved his little portable business card printing press, which I suppose would be replaced now with a portable inkjet printer and a laptop computer.
Rockford was a believable, human private eye in a period where 90 year old Barnaby Jones was picking rifle-wielding assassins off of rooftops with one hip shot after the assassin’s carefully planned rifle shot missed by a yard or so. The thing I hated most about the 70s “detective” shows was how they all had to have a “gimmick” and a “line” to deliver. “Who loves ya baby?” It was so predictable that it was downright silly.
A couple of other detective shows from the period that I found worth watching were Columbo and McMillan and Wife.
I have the Rockford season 1 DVDs. They do stand up well today, for all the reasons you describe.
But as much as I love Columbo… Talk about a gimmick and a line to deliver! You can almost set your watch by, “Oh, just one more thing…” And the trench coat, and the car… Plus the ultimate gimmick: the story structure, where you watch the killer commit the crime and cover his tracks, and you have to wonder how Columbo will unravel this story. I think that storyline was followed in every single episode.
Columbo and McMillan and Wife (ah, Susan St. James…) started on the NBC Mystery Movie, as you may recall. McCloud was another one in that line up, and another gimmick: the Arizona sheriff in New York. I sometimes catch episodes of McMillan and McCloud, and they still hold up well. (Columbo holds up better than well, as good today as ever.) Others from that series: not so well. I remember as a kid being fascinated with Banacek. I wanted to grow up and be Banacek, the uber cool Polish detective tooling around Boston. I caught some Banacek reruns a couple years back, and the stories were 100% lame and predictable.
The only other breakout show from that series was Quincy M.E., which I followed religiously back then. I fear that today, I would find it unbearably sanctimonious (much like I find Lou Grant if I stumble upon it today).
Television in that era was sooo dominated by certain formulas. All TV is but it was worse then what with only (realistically) 3 networks, and they definitely tended to have a “lowest common denominator” mentality. The few shows from that era that stand out do so for a variety of reasons, but mostly, either sometimes due to sheer luck they stumbled on a winning variation on the formula, or someone with a really creative idea lucked out and got through.
There we also see how a great idea often got rode into the ground. Take Columbo. It was a *great* show. The problem was, it never should have been a weekly series, because there wasn’t enough there to make that many episodes interesting. “Detective who seems stupid and clueless but is actually very bright” is a neat formula, but that’s good for a few episodes, in a sort of monthly one-hour movie format. If there had only ever been a dozen episodes of Columbo we could probably still look at it and talk about how it holds up. But they kept going, and going, and killed it.
I would agree that -maybe- The 6 Million Dollar Man could be redone today, but I don’t know. There was an attempt with The Bionic Woman just a few years ago and it bombed even though they had some talented people behind it. I’m not sure the idea really holds up now, not with “bionics” increasingly common and with the era of virtual reality coming to fruition; what is the excitement of the idea really? OK, he’s got an artificial arm that’s really strong, really strong fast artificial legs, and an artificial eye that has telescoping capability. That’s it huh?
I suspect that’s a property that would be hard to do much with without a *major* reimagining and going in wildly different directions.
Martin, I think there’s a difference between the characterization of Columbo and the tootsie-roll sucking “who luvs ya baby” spouting overt machismo of Kojak. (Was it “Kojak?”). Then “Cannon” and the stupid guy with the bird…. Those were gimmicks, the bumbling but brilliant detective is more of a trope perhaps.
Funny you should mention Banacek. I always viewed Banacek as a comedy, and I found George Peppard to be insufferably smug and vain, much as he was in the ‘A-Team’ another show I simply could not stomach. In fact when “Star Trek: Voyager” premiered I couldn’t take it seriously in part because I just couldn’t see Banacek’s girlfriend captaining a starship.
Heck, I had trouble with most 70s sitcoms for similar reasons… Every show had to have some character with a “line” that was picked up by the public, so the writers would craft some lame saying and then ram it down the throats of the public night after night after night… I think it was in part the incessant repeats of “watchoo talkin’ bout Willis?” or “dyyyynoMITE” or “aaaaayyyy” that finally turned me off TV pretty much for good.
Captain Janeway was, I believe, Banacek’s insurance investigator girlfriend. As far as I know we never got to meet Columbo’s wife, although I suppose they may have tried some ratings trick at the end of the series. I believe you are referring to yet another series called “Mrs. Columbo” which was set up to allow viewers to believe that there was some connection to “Columbo” but the writers of Columbo and Peter Falk himself publicly stated many times that “Mrs. Columbo” played by Banacek’s girlfriend, was never Columbo’s wife.
I never watched the “Mrs. Columbo show” I believe it probably aired during one of my many life periods where I was without a television.
Just a quibble, Dean: Columbo wasn’t weekly. Well, I think the 90s revival was (we got rid of broadcast TV right about then, satellite only, so I’m not sure); but the original, as part of the NBC Mystery Movie, was roughly monthly. They had three rotating features — Columbo, McMillan, and McCloud — plus a miscellaneous movie; so Columbo aired only one week out of four, for a two hour episode each time.
And oh, that first couple of seasons had some classic villains played by some classic stars. Donald Pleasance as the vintner still wows me. He was so sympathetic and likable, I almost wanted him to get away with it.
I never saw the Bionic Woman remake, as that was in my satellite-only era. I heard from a lot of friends that it just wasn’t that good. They expected something with as much addictive power as Galactica or Heroes, and got something mundane.
Cosmic,
I never watched a full episode of Kojak, Cannon, or Baretta, so I can’t compare. I suspect that the Quest for a Gimmick by these writers may have been driven by imitation of Columbo and McMillan and McCloud. Hollywood is famous for imitating the trappings of a successful concept without understanding the substance of that success.
Martin, perhaps you are right. I have certainly lamented Hollywood’s lack of originality many times over the years.
Two other TV detective shows worthy of note from that period are “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Starsky and Hutch.” I rarely watched either of them, but I’m sure each had their fans…
Geez, wasn’t that also about the time of “Hawaii 5-0″? Was there ANYTHING on TV back then but cop/detective shows?
I should add: while I’m willing to concede my memory could be faulty, IMDB doesn’t list Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) as ever being on Banacek. She starred in Mrs. Columbo, of course, which was later renamed Kate Columbo. I even remeber it briefly being titled Kate Loves a Mystery, though IMDB doesn’t show that title. I think by that point they were trying to mitigate damage to the Columbo brand. Even as a kid, I could tell the show didn’t live up to its name.
Now McCloud’s most frequent love interest was a Star Trek recurring guest, Diana Muldaur, who played two characters in original Trek (Dr. Anne Mulhall and Miranda Jones) and also Dr. Pulaski (a character I couldn’t like no matter how hard I tried) in Next Generation. Nearly 30 years later, I still remember her adding a touch of elegance to McCloud. She was such a contrast to the rough and tumble marshall (not sheriff, as I miswrote above).
Hmm… I can find a few other references to Kate Mulgrew being on Banacek, very similar to my own memories, but no official indication that Mulgrew was on the show.
My recollection is that Banacek played some insurance investigator and the insurance company always had this other investigator played by Mulgrew who was looking into the case, and Banacek always solved the mystery instead of the other investigator. But I didn’t watch many. If it wasn’t Kate Mulgrew, it was someone who looked remarkably like her.
I can’t recall the sitcom right now. It was clearly forgettable. But the characters were sitcom writers (no, not Dick van Dyke); and one time one of them explained their writing process. Paraphrased: “We leaf through old copies of TV Guide, read the plot synopsis for old Odd Couple episodes, and change the names to the names of our characters.” Now that was original, and funny. And very close to accurate: if you see one Gary Marshall sitcom, you’ve seen them all.
Yeah, we had a lot of cop shows then. Harlan Ellison (or maybe it was David Gerrold) once wrote of the TV cycle back in the 70s: cop shows everywhere, then lawyer shows everywhere, then doctor shows everywhere, and then repeat. More of that lack of originality at work. Again, I’m pretty sure it was Ellison who once wrote of when he had learned the Hollywood term “high concept”. That term always connoted sophistication to me; but the definition explained to him was: “So different, no one can imitate it without everyone knowing you were imitating it.” And the example they cited as perfect high concept?
The Dukes of Hazzard.
The Dukes of FREAKIN’ HAZZARD was a high concept show, because no one could imitate it without being an obvious knockoff.
Except I swear I remember some long-lost show that imitated it.
IMDB is not infallible. When you wrote about Kate Mulgrew on Banacek, I was ready to believe it, and halfway sure I remembered it. But if I had to choose between my memory and IMDB, the smart money would be on IMDB.
I can see “The Dukes of Hazzard” being considered “high concept.” I didn’t like the show, but it was unique. In many ways the star of the show was the General Lee. It was like a Superman comic where Superman was a car. It was also unique in portraying southern rednecks as the sharp ones outwitting the slick Easterners or Northerners every episode. In Hollywood portraying a southern redneck as anything but a banjo-picking halfwit is near to heresy.
{ 18 comments }
I hope the bionic man is around to fight him off…
I considered minoring in Sasquatology in college.
The bionic man is tied up in the one thing even Kung Fu grip can’t break: legal red tape. Universal and Miramax (or in other versions of the story, Universal and Dimension, or Universal and Martin Caidin) can’t agree who gets the big slice of the pie, so there’s no pie for anyone. I can’t think of another property from that era that would do so well as DVD releases or a revival or even a big screen film. The built-in nostalgia audience guarantees income, and the modern tech would make the effects AWESOME (in 70s speak). (I also feel that in a world where they can actually sell Charles in Charge DVDs, anything will sell.)
I’ve heard people argue they would have to change the title, because six million dollars isn’t what it used to be; but tech follows a different cost curve. The cell phone in your pocket today would’ve cost a lot more than six million in 1973. Indeed, it wouldn’t have been available at any price. So leave the title alone. Universal, Miramax, whoever… It’s time to bring Steve Austin back. We can rebuild him, you know we can…
If they bring him back, why don’t they use the title from the actual Martin Caidin book: “Cyborg.” I read the book long before Farrah Fawcett’s husband got the job, and it’s a pretty gritty book compared to the TV show. I wouldn’t mind seeing something done more like the book, which dug quite a bit deeper into the psychological impact of melding man and machine.
Oh, it screams for a Galactica style remake, and Caidin’s books (there were four, I think) make a great start. Caidin’s Steve Austin was a very complex anti-hero.
I don’t think you can remake a 70s-era story today without changing the tone. Audience tastes and expectations have changed. They might succeed with The Rockford Files remake if they left the tone alone. Jim Rockford was a different sort of hero from the usual 70s protagonist. But as much as I would enjoy the nostalgia of a DVD release, I doubt I could sit still for the same Six Million Dollar Man stories if released new today. Even as juvenile fare, they’re dated. That’s why so many of the TV remakes from that era are done as comedies (albeit bad comedies).
But for brand recognition, you have to keep the original title. Besides, Van Damme already did a film called “Cyborg”, and that would only add to the confusion.
Maybe so.. I loved “The Rockford Files.” I loved that when Jim Rockford punched a bad guy in the face, he’d hop around holding his hand for a minute afterwards. I loved his little portable business card printing press, which I suppose would be replaced now with a portable inkjet printer and a laptop computer.
Rockford was a believable, human private eye in a period where 90 year old Barnaby Jones was picking rifle-wielding assassins off of rooftops with one hip shot after the assassin’s carefully planned rifle shot missed by a yard or so. The thing I hated most about the 70s “detective” shows was how they all had to have a “gimmick” and a “line” to deliver. “Who loves ya baby?” It was so predictable that it was downright silly.
A couple of other detective shows from the period that I found worth watching were Columbo and McMillan and Wife.
Wow… I’m so friggin old…
I have the Rockford season 1 DVDs. They do stand up well today, for all the reasons you describe.
But as much as I love Columbo… Talk about a gimmick and a line to deliver! You can almost set your watch by, “Oh, just one more thing…” And the trench coat, and the car… Plus the ultimate gimmick: the story structure, where you watch the killer commit the crime and cover his tracks, and you have to wonder how Columbo will unravel this story. I think that storyline was followed in every single episode.
Columbo and McMillan and Wife (ah, Susan St. James…) started on the NBC Mystery Movie, as you may recall. McCloud was another one in that line up, and another gimmick: the Arizona sheriff in New York. I sometimes catch episodes of McMillan and McCloud, and they still hold up well. (Columbo holds up better than well, as good today as ever.) Others from that series: not so well. I remember as a kid being fascinated with Banacek. I wanted to grow up and be Banacek, the uber cool Polish detective tooling around Boston. I caught some Banacek reruns a couple years back, and the stories were 100% lame and predictable.
The only other breakout show from that series was Quincy M.E., which I followed religiously back then. I fear that today, I would find it unbearably sanctimonious (much like I find Lou Grant if I stumble upon it today).
Yes, we’re old. But I’m OK with that.
Television in that era was sooo dominated by certain formulas. All TV is but it was worse then what with only (realistically) 3 networks, and they definitely tended to have a “lowest common denominator” mentality. The few shows from that era that stand out do so for a variety of reasons, but mostly, either sometimes due to sheer luck they stumbled on a winning variation on the formula, or someone with a really creative idea lucked out and got through.
There we also see how a great idea often got rode into the ground. Take Columbo. It was a *great* show. The problem was, it never should have been a weekly series, because there wasn’t enough there to make that many episodes interesting. “Detective who seems stupid and clueless but is actually very bright” is a neat formula, but that’s good for a few episodes, in a sort of monthly one-hour movie format. If there had only ever been a dozen episodes of Columbo we could probably still look at it and talk about how it holds up. But they kept going, and going, and killed it.
I would agree that -maybe- The 6 Million Dollar Man could be redone today, but I don’t know. There was an attempt with The Bionic Woman just a few years ago and it bombed even though they had some talented people behind it. I’m not sure the idea really holds up now, not with “bionics” increasingly common and with the era of virtual reality coming to fruition; what is the excitement of the idea really? OK, he’s got an artificial arm that’s really strong, really strong fast artificial legs, and an artificial eye that has telescoping capability. That’s it huh?
I suspect that’s a property that would be hard to do much with without a *major* reimagining and going in wildly different directions.
Martin, I think there’s a difference between the characterization of Columbo and the tootsie-roll sucking “who luvs ya baby” spouting overt machismo of Kojak. (Was it “Kojak?”). Then “Cannon” and the stupid guy with the bird…. Those were gimmicks, the bumbling but brilliant detective is more of a trope perhaps.
Funny you should mention Banacek. I always viewed Banacek as a comedy, and I found George Peppard to be insufferably smug and vain, much as he was in the ‘A-Team’ another show I simply could not stomach. In fact when “Star Trek: Voyager” premiered I couldn’t take it seriously in part because I just couldn’t see Banacek’s girlfriend captaining a starship.
Heck, I had trouble with most 70s sitcoms for similar reasons… Every show had to have some character with a “line” that was picked up by the public, so the writers would craft some lame saying and then ram it down the throats of the public night after night after night… I think it was in part the incessant repeats of “watchoo talkin’ bout Willis?” or “dyyyynoMITE” or “aaaaayyyy” that finally turned me off TV pretty much for good.
Banacek’s girlfriend? I thought she was Mrs. Colombo.
Captain Janeway was, I believe, Banacek’s insurance investigator girlfriend. As far as I know we never got to meet Columbo’s wife, although I suppose they may have tried some ratings trick at the end of the series. I believe you are referring to yet another series called “Mrs. Columbo” which was set up to allow viewers to believe that there was some connection to “Columbo” but the writers of Columbo and Peter Falk himself publicly stated many times that “Mrs. Columbo” played by Banacek’s girlfriend, was never Columbo’s wife.
I never watched the “Mrs. Columbo show” I believe it probably aired during one of my many life periods where I was without a television.
Just a quibble, Dean: Columbo wasn’t weekly. Well, I think the 90s revival was (we got rid of broadcast TV right about then, satellite only, so I’m not sure); but the original, as part of the NBC Mystery Movie, was roughly monthly. They had three rotating features — Columbo, McMillan, and McCloud — plus a miscellaneous movie; so Columbo aired only one week out of four, for a two hour episode each time.
And oh, that first couple of seasons had some classic villains played by some classic stars. Donald Pleasance as the vintner still wows me. He was so sympathetic and likable, I almost wanted him to get away with it.
I never saw the Bionic Woman remake, as that was in my satellite-only era. I heard from a lot of friends that it just wasn’t that good. They expected something with as much addictive power as Galactica or Heroes, and got something mundane.
Cosmic,
I never watched a full episode of Kojak, Cannon, or Baretta, so I can’t compare. I suspect that the Quest for a Gimmick by these writers may have been driven by imitation of Columbo and McMillan and McCloud. Hollywood is famous for imitating the trappings of a successful concept without understanding the substance of that success.
Martin, perhaps you are right. I have certainly lamented Hollywood’s lack of originality many times over the years.
Two other TV detective shows worthy of note from that period are “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Starsky and Hutch.” I rarely watched either of them, but I’m sure each had their fans…
Geez, wasn’t that also about the time of “Hawaii 5-0″? Was there ANYTHING on TV back then but cop/detective shows?
I should add: while I’m willing to concede my memory could be faulty, IMDB doesn’t list Kate Mulgrew (Captain Janeway) as ever being on Banacek. She starred in Mrs. Columbo, of course, which was later renamed Kate Columbo. I even remeber it briefly being titled Kate Loves a Mystery, though IMDB doesn’t show that title. I think by that point they were trying to mitigate damage to the Columbo brand. Even as a kid, I could tell the show didn’t live up to its name.
Now McCloud’s most frequent love interest was a Star Trek recurring guest, Diana Muldaur, who played two characters in original Trek (Dr. Anne Mulhall and Miranda Jones) and also Dr. Pulaski (a character I couldn’t like no matter how hard I tried) in Next Generation. Nearly 30 years later, I still remember her adding a touch of elegance to McCloud. She was such a contrast to the rough and tumble marshall (not sheriff, as I miswrote above).
Hmm… I can find a few other references to Kate Mulgrew being on Banacek, very similar to my own memories, but no official indication that Mulgrew was on the show.
My recollection is that Banacek played some insurance investigator and the insurance company always had this other investigator played by Mulgrew who was looking into the case, and Banacek always solved the mystery instead of the other investigator. But I didn’t watch many. If it wasn’t Kate Mulgrew, it was someone who looked remarkably like her.
I can’t recall the sitcom right now. It was clearly forgettable. But the characters were sitcom writers (no, not Dick van Dyke); and one time one of them explained their writing process. Paraphrased: “We leaf through old copies of TV Guide, read the plot synopsis for old Odd Couple episodes, and change the names to the names of our characters.” Now that was original, and funny. And very close to accurate: if you see one Gary Marshall sitcom, you’ve seen them all.
Yeah, we had a lot of cop shows then. Harlan Ellison (or maybe it was David Gerrold) once wrote of the TV cycle back in the 70s: cop shows everywhere, then lawyer shows everywhere, then doctor shows everywhere, and then repeat. More of that lack of originality at work. Again, I’m pretty sure it was Ellison who once wrote of when he had learned the Hollywood term “high concept”. That term always connoted sophistication to me; but the definition explained to him was: “So different, no one can imitate it without everyone knowing you were imitating it.” And the example they cited as perfect high concept?
The Dukes of Hazzard.
The Dukes of FREAKIN’ HAZZARD was a high concept show, because no one could imitate it without being an obvious knockoff.
Except I swear I remember some long-lost show that imitated it.
IMDB is not infallible. When you wrote about Kate Mulgrew on Banacek, I was ready to believe it, and halfway sure I remembered it. But if I had to choose between my memory and IMDB, the smart money would be on IMDB.
I can see “The Dukes of Hazzard” being considered “high concept.” I didn’t like the show, but it was unique. In many ways the star of the show was the General Lee. It was like a Superman comic where Superman was a car. It was also unique in portraying southern rednecks as the sharp ones outwitting the slick Easterners or Northerners every episode. In Hollywood portraying a southern redneck as anything but a banjo-picking halfwit is near to heresy.
Comments on this entry are closed.