6 popular TV reboots that discovered the secret to Emmy success
Every year, Emmy prognosticators weigh the chances of TV’s newcomers. But what about newcomers that are also old-timers?
Whether you prefer to call them remakes, revivals or reboots, reimaginations of beloved movies and TV shows are all the rage: Think of CBS’ “Matlock,” which swapped in Academy Award winner Kathy Bates for Andy Griffith as a charming lawyer who gets things done in the legal system; Peacock’s “Bel-Air,” which turned a multicam sitcom into a drama; or HBO’s “Perry Mason,” which was less about the courtroom than Mason as private investigator.
When it comes to awards season, though, reboots aren’t such a hot commodity. Max’s “Gossip Girl,” Paramount+’s “Frasier” and ABC’s “The Wonder Years” came and went with no wins, and continuations like NBC’s “Law & Order” and “Will & Grace,” Fox’s “The X-Files” and CBS’ “Murphy Brown” have generally not received the same love from voters as their original runs.
Not all reboots fizzle at the Emmys, though. Here are six examples of rethinks that not only brought back beloved series from the graveyard but made them award-worthy all over again.
Brandon Scott Jones on CBS’ ‘Ghosts’: ‘I enjoy playing characters that are desperate’
Surprise! CBS‘ Ghosts is quite a revolutionary endeavor, especially for a sitcom on a broadcast network. A big part of that is thanks to costar Brandon Scott Jones, who plays the ephemeral, late Isaac Higgintoot — a soldier who fought on the side of the American Continental Congress in the Revolutionary War.
Now, Isaac wasn’t a big fan of war — he preferred surrendering post-battle — and actually met his end not by a barrage of buckshot, but due to dysentery. Still, Isaac isn’t only revolutionary thanks to his character: He’s possibly one of the first American military men to adhere to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of being gay in the U.S. armed forces.
Elisabeth Moss on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ finale moment that gave her chills
Red cloaks. Stiff white bonnets. Bent heads. If there’s a single image that Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” leaves audiences with as it ends its six-season run this week, it’s this one: That of women in a dystopian anti-America called Gilead, evolving from anonymous sexual slaves into rebels, warriors and, sometimes, survivors.
But for “Handmaid’s” creator Bruce Miller and star Elisabeth Moss, who also directed several episodes in the final season, the series, based on the 1985 book by Margaret Atwood, was never about what the women wore. It was about the women inside the color-coded uniforms
Danielle Pinnock on playing Alberta in CBS’ ‘Ghosts,’ representation, and what’s next for the hit comedy
For the last four years, Danielle Pinnock has been a ghost — and she couldn’t be happier. As one of the large, spirited cast of CBS‘s Ghosts, Pinnock plays former Prohibition-era jazz singer Alberta, who died on New Year’s Eve 1928 after accidentally drinking poisoned moonshine. But in Pinnock’s hands, Alberta’s living her very best afterlife as the show wraps up its fourth season and looks forward to the now-guaranteed two seasons more ahead.
Part of Pinnock’s joy in the role, as she tells Gold Derby, comes from the way Alberta is written. “A lot of times what happens when you see any actor of color playing on broadcast television, we almost become decorations on a Christmas tree where we’re just fun to look at, but no one really cares about our storylines,” she says.
Save or Shred? On the Allure and Conundrum of Unpublished Novels
Is this your first novel?
Every author, at some point, fields this question. The non-writing world—encouraged up by Hollywood’s take on how the life of the author works—has been left to believe that publishing a book looks like this: Get inspired. Write the book (in approximately two months). Show the book, receive ecstatic encouragement. Achieve agent, achieve publisher, book comes out (again, to ecstatic encouragement). Rinse, repeat.
Here’s the truth: Most authors do not publish their first novel. Writers have a string of almost-rans, never-completeds, and works that never found publishing homes.
Regardless of where these works are literally kept, they’re referred to as “trunk” novels. Every author has one, two or ten, and they’re often only discovered posthumously.
‘I’ve gotten a high from the gavel’: Melissa Rauch on bringing ‘Night Court’ back to life and crafting Judge Abby Stone
Melissa Rauch is serious about comedy. Or maybe it’s just that in her role as Judge Abby Stone on NBC’s reboot of Night Court, she gets a power rush from waving her gavel around.
“What I’ve really gotten a high on in playing [Abby] is the judgy powers of having the decision in the palm of my hand,” she tells Gold Derby. “There is such a control that comes with that, just by making a decision and going like this—” she mimes banging, “and going for the gavel!”
‘Severance’ Season 2 finale explained
“Severance” fans have been waiting for the arrival of “Cold Harbor” — the 10th and final episode of Season 2 — for weeks.
While the second season of the twisty hit Apple TV+ show has deepened the mysteries of the corporation called Lumon and the “innies” who work there, as well as their split-mind “outies” who live in the real world, there have been far more questions than answers.
Thursday night marked the premiere of “Cold Harbor,” and while it gave quite a few answers to what Mark S. (Adam Scott) would do to free his not-actually-dead wife Gemma (Dichen Lachman) from the experimental clutches of Lumon’s lower floor, viewers are still left with a lot of questions — and a set-up for a tense Season 3.
Here’s what we found out as Season 2 wrapped up, what we think we know … and where we imagine things might go next. At least, that’s what our outies think.
Long Before I Discovered My Irish Heritage, Irish Folktales Comforted My Dying Grandfather — And Inspired My New Book (Exclusive)
It was the 1990s, and Pop-Pop was dying. Pop-Pop was my grandfather, wrestling with late-stage diabetes, and he didn’t have long to live. This news hit me hard; I’d appointed him years earlier as the Good Guy Role Model in my life when my adoptive father absented himself from that position.
I needed to go home and see him one last time. Whoever Sylvan Bernard Gordon had been to anyone else in his life, he taught me the value of shared, companionable silence riding next to him in the car, his easy-listening radio station lulling us with elevator music. He was the grocery shopper and salad-preparer in his household, normalizing for me that men could choose to do those things in a family. He never did convince me to enjoy golf, though I would watch it with him just so we could hang out more.
What I didn’t know then was how he was about to indirectly lead me on an unexpected journey – one that took decades to come to light in my new book, The Only Song Worth Singing.
Natalie Morales on playing a ‘guilt demon’ in ‘My Dead Friend Zoe’
Playing a deceased character in a movie might seem to be one of the easiest roles an actor could take on. After all, what is there to do but lie around and be… well, deceased?
Not so for Natalie Morales, who plays the title character in the moving, funny, and very human new film My Dead Friend Zoe. At the start of the film, Zoe is just a figment of her best pal Merit’s (Sonequa Martin-Green) memory and imagination, razzing her at a meeting for military veterans one minute, and then jazzing along with her to their favorite tunes on a drive. But as the movie unfolds, we learn more about the pair, who became close while serving overseas in the Army — and we learn what Zoe was like when she was still in the present tense.
Oscars flashback: Clint Eastwood leads the way
In any given year, what makes for a best picture? Are there clues as to what might win, strewn throughout any given Oscars broadcast? As a matter of fact, there usually are — at least if you know what to look for: a sweep, a director win or even a chance to make history. Still, at the 77th Academy Awards ceremony, held Feb. 27, 2005, at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, “Million Dollar Baby” was not a lock on the prize — until all at once, it was.
