'ELLO, ELLO, ELLO! In news that would delight main character Valerie Cherish, HBO's mid-noughties comedy The Comeback is returning to screens later this year. Created by Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow, this hilarious and impressively layered show about a washed-up actor making a return to TV ran for just one season in 2005. And now, following a campaign by Entertainment Weekly, The Comeback is making a comeback.
The show is steeped in King and Kudrow's shared experience of working on various TV comedies; not least Friends and Sex and the City. Cherish's character may have winked at the fact The Comeback was Kudrow's first post-Friends project, but the show was also a muscular commentary on television in the mid-noughties. It wasn't just that it rode the wave of knowing, observational post-Office sitcoms. The Comeback was also a commentary on the era of "mean TV" and reality shows that encouraged viewers to laugh at celebrities unravelling.
The show followed Kudrow as actor Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom star attempting to make her way back onto TV with two shows, a Nickelodeon-like sitcom called Room and Bored and a reality show. Told by one of her only allies, "I'm trying to help you here – you're not 'it' any more,' she soldiers on in wilful obliviousness. Both creators have suggested that in 2014 Cherish would be reaping the rewards of existing in a selfie-taking, reality-star driven celebrity world, with Kudrow hinting that Cherish's natural home is in a Real Housewives franchise.
And who wouldn't want to see that? But The Comeback isn't the only show overdue a return to screen. Which others would you add to the list?
The Hour
Inexplicably cancelled by the BBC after two series, Abi Morgan's show was a compelling mix of period drama intrigue and newsroom angst that ended too soon.
Party Down
Another Hollywood navel-gazing sitcom which featured the likes of Jane Lynch, Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott playing a bunch of LA actors attempting to make it big.
My So-Called Life
The subject of much fan fiction (some of which is mine) is begging for a revival. I mean, how will Carrie Mathison manage to continue as a spy with her Oscar-winning hubby by her side?
Freaks and Geeks
Whimsical and lovingly put together, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig's first creation was a stellar one-series loner. When it ended the audience was left with a million unanswered questions about the fate of these outcasts.
I'll Fly Away
From the team behind St Elsewhere and Northern Exposure, this was a complicated drama that followed Lily Harper, a black housekeeper who worked for the district attorney's family in America's south in the prejudice-riven 1950s.
