I believe I saw recently on Twitter there is a Munsters movie coming out directed by Rob Zombie.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, By Rob dang old Zombie. Yep.
And I just want to point out that if there was ever a time to introduce a new character
to the cast of The Munsters, it's their wacky neighbor, Rob Zombie, who lives down the street.
Oh, outstanding.
You know? Why isn't that a thing?
I just found an incredible review of the Charlie's Angels reboot. It's so mean.
I didn't even know it existed.
I remember hearing about it. I didn't watch it when it aired,
but I watched 15 minutes of it and was like, got it, this sucks.
I mean, have we started? I mean, I think we've started. This is technically
the beginning of the episode. We've already begun.
The video is just going, yeah, man.
We're going.
I love it. This is organic. This is this some Marc Maron stuff.
Nina, tell us more about Charlie's Angles.
I'm sure that I cursed at some point. I'm sure I said a bad.
That's okay. If you did-
Don't say a bad, Nina.
It's fine. It's fine.
Oh, okay.
So Nina, we're we're talking. Tell us more about Charlie's Angels.
Nina, tell us about a TV and movie reboot that you think stunk or that nobody wanted.
That's the name of this video. Yes. Tell us more about Charlie's Angels.
All right. Are you familiar with what Charlie's Angels is? Do I have to explain
the very, very, very layered concept to you?
Explain it to me like I'm a man who wasn't roughly pubescent at the time that the Drew Barrymore-
Not just pubescent, roughly pubescent.
Vaguely. There was...
Nevermind. Please continue.
I have to go throw up. I have to go throw up for like an hour.
We all did, man.
Charlie's Angels is about three very different extremely hot women who fight crime in bikinis
and are ordered around by a speaker box that is sentient, question mark. It's the same voice
in almost every reboot so I'm just like, ooh, what's going on here. Are they cloning Charlie?
It's Charlie? That's Charlie?
That's Charlie but are they cloning one person? Do they just have like a robot in the back somewhere
that just recites things like, "Good job angels?" I don't understand how it works, but whatever.
It's Walt Disney's brain.
It's always clippy. That's the gist. And it's Walt Disney's frozen
head. So yeah, the original seventies version...
It was the seventies, right? Am I correct?
Yeah, seventies is right.
That sounds right.
Yeah. Okay. So, that was a big hit and for years everybody has been trying to capitalize off of
it and it has not returned to TV that many times and I think this reboot shows us why.
So in the early two thousands it had two relatively successful movies with Lucy Liu,
Cameron Diaz, and Drew Barrymore and I liked those movies. They're campy and their dumb,
but they know what they are and they have fun with it. Like the second one opens with
Cameron Diaz riding a mechanical bull and it sets the tone for the entire movie. Sam
Rockwell is the villain in the first one and he's really campy and over the top and it's awesome.
In the second one Justin Theroux is the villain and he has an Irish accent, no reason why, he just
does. It's great. So after those were successful they tried to reboot it on TV and they tried to
reboot it with Minka Kelly, who was on Friday Night Lights, and Rachael, I'm finding her name,
Taylor, and Annie Ilonzeh and I'm not sure what either of them were in before that, but
I remembered Minka Kelly from Friday Night Lights. It is not a good show. It is very clearly a cash
grab. The acting is really wooden. A person will try to deliver a line and it's pretty clear that
it's supposed to be a joke, but then there's a weird dead silence where no one talks for a while.
So you're saying that this wasn't one of those like passion project
heartfelt Charlie's Angels reboots?
I know it's hard to believe, right? It's hard to believe that the millionth remake of a very
popular IP was a small indie television project. The problem with the TV show is
it takes itself too seriously and this show was on air at the same time as Revenge or
the first season of American Horror Story, things that are camp and know they're camp.
Right.
And I found this amazing review by one of my favorite critics, Linda Holmes, who is a critic
for NPR and hosts Pop Culture Happy Hour. And in the headline she called it, "The depressing
speckle of a project no one loves." And later she called it, "A dead, unloved pre chewed blob."
Wow.
So she basically was like, this has no drive, no passion, no one wants to be there. The
writing is bad. The acting is bad. This is a cash grab. And it should be campy and fun,
but it can't even muster the energy to do that. And that's why it's so bad.
It can't even bother to be self-aware.
Right.
What a drag.
It's way too like, we're actually doing this whereas Charlie's Angels is campy.
The movies are campy. Just be camp, it's fine. Camp works.
Got it.
And this is just a nothing burger of a TV show. Who wants to talk next? I'm done.
That's such a drag.
Tom.
Hey, how are you?
Talk to us about TV reboots nobody wanted.
I won't say anything to you, Brian. I've heard what kind of person you are.
Okay. So there are a couple of different ways that you can interpret that nobody wanted. The one that
I picked actually I really enjoyed. I think people in general enjoyed it. I think nobody wanted it in
that nobody watched it or knew that it existed as far as I can tell. About 10 years back, the year
was 2012, there was a reboot of The Munsters that tried desperately hard get made on NBC.
There was?
It was made by Bryan Fuller, which makes it kind of amazing that Bryan Fuller
stayed on board for the whole one episode without quitting.
Oh, I was going to say one last thing about Charlie's
Angels is that got canceled after seven episodes, which is pretty bleak. Go on.
Seven episodes?
Yeah, I forgot that part. Go on. So Bryan Fuller is amazing. We all can acknowledge that, right?
I tend to agree, yeah.
Yeah.
But he does also have this habit of not doing the shows that he makes.
Right. The J.J. Abrams syndrome, yeah, start a show then leave.
Yeah, very, very much. Yeah, over and over and over and over again. No, but he
managed to stick it out through the whole pilot of this show, which was called Mockingbird Lane.
I vaguely remember this.
Oh, right.
It's neat. It's impressive. The cast had papa Munster, old daddy Munster this time around-
Herman Munster.
... being play by Brian, your guy.
Who's my guy?
Jerry Sliders O'Connor. O'Connor? Is that his name?
You mean Commander Jack Ransom from the hit Star Trek: Lower Decks show?
Yes, Jerry O'Connell Jerry O'Connell.
That's the one.
Jerry O'Connell is great. Joe's Apartment. Let's go.
There you go.
Remember Joe's Apartment?
Absolutely not.
What are you talking about?
This was a movie they made based on MTV promo commercials
about a man who lives with talking and singing cockroaches.
You 500 year old man. Sound in theaters,
this was a Laurel and Hardy adventure. This was back in the day.
It was a talkie, one of the early talkies.
You know, they used to sing that song about a yellow ribbon in her hair.
Anyway, go on, go on. Jerry O'Connell stared as Herman Munster somehow.
He did. Portia de Rossi plays the mom.
I could see that.
She's coming right off of Better off Ted.
A great show. Yeah.
So she's in full semi camp weirdness mode.
The real like hero shot though is Eddie Izzard plays Grandpa Munster and it is...
That is pretty perfect.
Yeah.
... the creepiest performance. They take it all the way from the goofy kind of Count
Chocula version from the original and they turn the character into this horrifying...
He's the disapproving grandfather character who just does not understand why his son-in-law
won't raise his child to be an unrepentant murder machine, why he's uncomfortable with his child,
who's currently in the middle of realizing that he might be a werewolf, doesn't understand why
he won't teach the kid to just kill all the neighbors and does just a fantastic job with it.
This does sound like a Bryan Fuller joint.
It really is. It's that kind of like that half Neil Gaiman mythology meets kind of Tim Burtonish.
Yeah, yeah.
It's really delightful. It lasted one episode.
Which is also how I would describe Pushing Daisies actually, is those two comparisons.
No, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And a little bit of Dead Like Me and kind of the mundane real world meets this nightmare.
The fantastical, yeah.
Yeah. It's really fun.
I believe I saw recently on Twitter, there is a Munsters movie coming out directed by Rob Zombie.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. By Rob dang old Zombie. Yep
And I just want to point out that if there was ever a time to introduce a new character
to the cast of The Munsters it's their wacky neighbor Rob Zombie who lives down the street.
Outstanding.
You know? Why isn't that a thing, where he just shows up in his dumb cowboy hat and he's like,
brains, and it's like, good to see you too, Rob.
Oh. Rob's back. Yeah.
He's like the Bader character from Office Space where he's just kind of hanging out
in the tag top and Eddie Munster goes over every once in a while going, hey,
there's beer in the fridge. Don't tell your parents. That kind of thing.
Eddie Munster hangs out with Rob Zombie.
Yeah. I'll have to ask Mr. Zombie himself.
Mr. Zombie. Robert Zombie. Show some respect.
Sir Zombie.
Zombie Esq., yeah.
Yeah, Bob Zombie.
Anyway, that was my pick. It lasted one episode.
Interesting.
It flopped. It was supposed to get picked up for series, but NBC got cold feet.
And you can find this relatively easily on like YouTube or something?
I couldn't find it on YouTube, but I'm sure that it's out there somewhere.
All right. I'll have to track that down. That sounds pretty good.
Yeah.
There's a few on our article on looper.com that I'll run through briefly before I
focus on a few others. We've got a Knight Rider reboot I vaguely remember happening.
Val Kilmer as the voice of KITT.
I enjoyed Knight Rider back in the day when I was a young man. We've got a show called Cupid,
which I'd never heard of. We got a Wonder Woman reboot I remember happening and then never airing.
Yeah. Adrianne Palicki, right?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Another Friday Night Lights alum.
Yeah.
I think one of the ones I want to focus on here is Bionic Woman, which I remember happening.
Thank God Jesse Plemons is okay by the way. Thank God.
So Bionic Woman is a show I remember watching when the reboot came out.
I think I checked it out because it stared...
What the heck is her name? Oh no.
I can't remember. I know who you're talking about, though.
Starbuck, right? What is her name
In the original?
Starbuck from the new Battlestar Galactica was on the Bionic Woman.
No. Katee Sackhoff.
Katee Sackhoff, thank you. And that was why I checked out Bionic Woman, because I was like,
oh, I like Katee Sackhoff, I think she's going to do a good job.
Is she playing like a side character in it?
She was the bad guy I think.
Oh, okay.
She was the evil bionic woman who the bionic woman had to fight. So anyway,
the show sucked and it got canceled pretty quick. Dragnet is on here.
It happened right around the writer's strike too, right?
It was, yeah.
Exactly. And then Dragnet is on here, a show I don't remember being rebooted,
but I do remember watching the movie in the eighties starring Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks.
Oh yeah.
Were you getting a discount at the movie at that point because you were already so old?
Were you angry that they didn't follow the same plot as the radio program
from the 1940s, the one that you used to gather around?
All I can say is
what really made me mad was the end, they had a rap and they just didn't understand rap.
Oh. You don't stand for that, no.
Those kids.
Well, but in all seriousness though, look it up on YouTube. There is a music video that I love.
I'm sure it's terrible.
It's Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd doing a Dragnet rap.
Wow.
This has nothing to do with the show, but I'm just
saying the movie was pretty good, but then there was this great rap. So there's that.
Also on our list, one that I do want to focus a bit on
is a show called The IT Crowd, which is a classic British one.
A great show show.
A classic now. It's just amazingly funny.
Yep.
They rebooted it. They tried it out in America American Office style and they recast two of the
three leads with Richard Ayoade sticking round as Moss in the American version.
Mm-hmm.
And I don't remember who replaced Jen,
but I know that the guy that they got to replace Roy was Joel McHale.
Right.
Which is the worst casting choice you could make not because Joel McHale is no good-
He's terrific.
... but because he just he doesn't fit as a loser IT guy.
Right. He's got chiseled good looks.
And he's former college football player and he is incredibly charming and doesn't fit as
a vaguely creepy schlubby guy so perfectly embodied by Chris O'Dowd in the original. So
I watched the first half of the American reboot and it's really not funny.
Oh. Who made it? Was it the same people?
Possibly.
I don't know. I'm not 100% sure on who actually-
They tried to do the same kind of thing with...
Did either of you watch Broadchurch, the British one?
Yeah. No, but I should.
You should. It's great. The first season is ridiculously amazing and it's Olivia Coleman
and David Tennant. Jody Whittaker is also on it. It's got a jam packed British cast. And
they remade it in the states and they put Anna Gunn in the Olivia Coleman role of Breaking Bad.
And then they were like, David Tennant, do an American accent. And it sucked. It was bad show.
I probably should have picked that as my reboot, but it was really bad and everybody was like,
why would you reboot this? A, people can just watch it, and B, why would you not let him at
least be British? He's so good at both being British and Scottish, which he is Scottish.
But his right UK accents are perfect. His American one, not so much.
And it was just awkward and weird because everyone knows him as
the Doctor or from being British in Jessica Jones. Just, don't make him be American. It's weird.
Right. It's not great.
No.
And on that subject, to do a third British to American import that does not work.
Rule of threes. Let's go.
This is going to finish it off. There's a show that I love, a British show called Taskmaster.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. It's been very joyful to me during the pandemic,
during lockdown, during dark times. Throw on Taskmaster, most of it's on YouTube for free.
It's so funny. It's hosted by Greg Davies and Alex Horne as his assistant, which was actually
the show creator. And it gets five British comedians or regular just general personalities,
famous personalities in the UK, to do dumb stuff. And they compete on who can
do the best dumb stuff of what's in front of them. It's so funny.
So I was excited to see that there was an American version.
I made it through about five minutes before I turned it off.
It's an all American cast of personalities. They replace Greg Davies with Reggie Watts.
Right. It doesn't work.
Alex Horne is there again. He helped create the American version. I read that apparently
this show got canceled within the first 23 minutes of being on TV.
Nice.
Oh wow.
It's wild because this is a show that has been exported to various countries.
There's a New Zealand version. I think it's in
various European countries. And for whatever reason, they tried it in America and it just was
immediately like, this doesn't work, and it's a bummer because it's one of those things that
should work anywhere if you get the right people but there's something about when...
Unless you do it right
it's hard for Americans to capture the essence of what makes a British show good.
Yeah. Like, even the American Office,
one of the reasons why people love it so much is not because it replicates the British Office-
But because it doesn't.
It got better once it stopped trying to do that.
Right.
But American Taskmaster just didn't work. I'm sorry guys. I'll give it another try. I'm sure
there's something in there that's good. But man, oh man, that's some rough stuff.
I believe you. I believe you. But anyway, go check out the British-
It kind of needs somebody snotty and up their own butt to be the
guy that's in charge and Reggie Watts didn't really have that.
Yeah. Reggie Watts doesn't have that.
I like Reggie Watts a lot. I think he's brilliant.
He's great but he's not right for the role.
Yeah. Reggie Watts is fun and approachable.
That's very bad casting.
Yeah.
Who I think would be really good, two people come to mind. One is Dave Attell.
Okay.
As just someone who sits on a throne and angrily makes people do things that don't matter.
Yeah.
And on that same note, Mark Maron, you know?
Oh, okay. So I kind of thought Mark Maron too. I hesitate to bring it up, Chevy Chase.
Oh.
Right?
Chevy Chase.
Too on the nose maybe.
Well, here's the problem with that. Here's the problem with that,
and I don't think anything I'm saying is going to be libelous because it's pretty well documented.
Let's find out.
The whole point of Taskmaster is to pretend to be an a-hole.
And Chevy Chase is famously a notoriously, said to be difficult.
I'm not trying to pigeonhole him. I'm just saying he's got practice playing this character.
Yeah. Let's not torture the rest of the cast with his presence, please.
Right. You know what? Twist, on the subject of Chevy Chase.
Dan Harmon?
I was going to say Joel McHale.
Oh yeah. That works great.
Perfect. Put him in there. There we go.
Let's do it.
We Figured it out. Call me Alex. Call me Alex Horne. I'll help you develop the American version.
This one is lasting 24 minutes. If we keep this up, 800 more reboots. We've got a full season.
Perfect.
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