The 10 Worst TV Reboots

We are living in a golden age of sequels, prequels, legacyquels, reboots, and revivals, to the point that it seems like everything on TV and in the movie theater is a new version or something or a continuation of something else. There’s nothing a studio loves more than beloved IP with a built-in fanbase of guaranteed ticket-buyers, and they all seem to believe that the safest bet is to show the people more of what we’ve already seen.

That sometimes works great. The Marvel Cinematic Universe trucked along for over ten years before the cracks started to show. Everyone goes to see Disney’s awful “live-action” reboots of classic cartoons. People tend to be predisposed to like things they’re familiar with, so studios and television networks often attempt to serve us the same stuff.

It also helps when a company has a backlog of things they already own ripe for revisiting. TV networks love to reboot shows that have gone dormant for ten or more years, and, to be fair, that’s brought us some of the most beloved television shows ever made. Doctor Who, Cobra Kai, One Day at a Time, and Queer Eye all managed to find their classic niche in contemporary television, to a degree that, in some cases, they’ve even superseded the original.

But, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way, and more often than not a TV reboot is a death sentence for a new show. We’ve compiled a list of ten of the worst offenders of the past twenty years, which attempted to reinvigorate a familiar formula, taking the bones of a famous TV show our parents or grandparents loved and bringing it into today. In these cases, you’d be better served rewatching the classics.