Prison: a place with lots of bars but no drink. That hasn’t stopped Paul Scheuring, the man who came up with Prison Break, from returning for another round. Ten years after the high-concept, breakneck-paced action melodrama about the bonds of brotherhood and blueprint-concealing full-body tattoos was first broadcast, Fox has confirmed it wants to proceed with a new limited series with Scheuring at the helm. It would also, crucially, feature the return of stars Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell, who recently reignited their on-screen bromance as a pair of exuberant ice-and-fire villains on superhero show The Flash.
After years of reboots, such as Knight Rider and Hawaii Five-O, that had little in common with the original apart from a title and perhaps a remixed theme tune, Prison Break is part of a wave of what you might call “provenance TV”: resurrections of existing properties that get the band back together and make a point of telling viewers about it. They also tend to be continuations, picking up where things left off (or, at least, went off the boil, commercially). It adds a sense of familiarity and can also help explain away any crinkling of the cast.
Reuniting the original creative talent, both on-screen and off, is now recognised as an important way of getting existing fans to buy into any remake or quasi-reboot. It adds a welcome whiff of authenticity – like a band playing a classic album with their original lineup – that helps mask the cold metallic tang of commercial imperatives.
Scheuring might not have the built-in brand recognition of The X-Files creator Chris Carter, or David Lynch but Fox clearly thinks that having him attached to any new incarnation of Prison Break is important. And it’s Fox that has pioneered this new approach, having overseen the limited series 24: Live Another Day and subsequently convincing Carter, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to return for a celebratory reopening of The X-Files.
While Live Another Day proved a financial success, we’ve since learned the next 24 mini-series won’t feature Jack Bauer, which might turn out to be a continuation too far. But Fox’s stewardship of the new six-episode series of The X-Files seems like an object lesson in getting fans on board, creating tangible buzz for a show that had long since gravitated from global sensation to dusty irrelevance.
Things have been more turbulent over at Showtime where – after winning enormous goodwill for facilitating David Lynch’s return to Twin Peaks – a very public spat over funding looked like it would scuttle the entire project, as fans insisted they would bin any version of Twin Peaks that didn’t involve Lynch’s uniquely unsettling imprimatur. It felt too precarious to be a publicity stunt and, last month, the two parties agreed terms that are presumably going to be even more pleasing to fans: Lynch will now direct double the number of episodes originally promised.
Would anyone threaten to boycott NBC’s surprise resurrection of Heroes if Tim Kring walked away from the project? Probably not, but having Kring publicly on board means that, if Heroes Reborn is a failure, there’s a scapegoat in place. Perhaps it’s no wonder TV executives are coming round to the idea of taking reboots back to their roots. It’s a win-win: if the project is a success, the network looks both smart and principled for bringing back the key talent. And if it’s a flop, they can shrug and say: “What more could we have done?”
Recruiting original creators, stars, directors or even composers (as 24: Live Another Day did with Sean Callery) feels like an attempt to recapture the spirit of a TV show, and surely that can only be a good thing. As TV trends go, anything that grants more respect or agency to original creators seems like a positive step. But there is a danger of romanticising the idea that the person who created a groundbreaking piece of art is always the best qualified to continue the story or reinterpret it for a new generation. Whenever I get too caught up in that notion I just remember two words: George Lucas.
