While the fifth season of Mad Men itself won’t debut until early 2012, watch for plenty of swank mid-’60s action on the fall TV schedule. Let’s run down the roster, shall we? As we mentioned last week, ABC has Pan Am and NBC has The Playboy Club.
CBS is deciding to really kick out the video wall paper old school style, with the a reboot of the original TV series about an over-stressed workaholic 30-something man in an ad agency, his troubles with overly demanding management and clients, and his hot blonde wife back in the hinterlands of suburbia.
Yes, I’m talking about Betwitched, of course: That ol’ black magic is back, baby!
In the latest classic TV title getting considered for a reboot, CBS and Sony are developing a script for remake of the classic sitcom Bewitched. This is still in very early stages, but it’s definitely a project worth keeping an eye on.
Sony ushered the return of Angels and the producers of the clunky film version (which starred Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell) are on board. Can you imagine the 2011 pitch of this show, about an ordinary suburban businessman who discovers his wife has magical powers? “It’s Harry Potter meets Desperate Housewives!”
Nahh, it’s Mad Men: The Original Series. To boldly go where no broomstick has gone before. Sadly without the late Elizabeth Montgomery this time around, who managed to look classy and sophisticated, no matter how dopey the scripts that Screen Gems handed her.
Update: I mentioned ABC’s Pan Am series above and in an earlier blog post; at Big Hollywood, Warner Todd Huston writes that it will be as accurate a look at the harsh realities of the airline industry and the social mores of the early 1960s as Bewitched was of Madison Avenue.
It’s not just Elizabeth Montgomery–nobody can replace Paul Lynde as Uncle Arthur.
Since when did FOX stop counting as a network, when it’s the number one in viewers? And CW? Until those two aim to have it, then not every network is.
And is there any reason to believe the rebooted Bewitched isn’t set in modern times? Even then, it probably won’t air this fall, but either mid-season at the earliest or NEXT fall.
And based on the Pan Am trailer, it’s only similarity with Mad Men is it’s time period.
Playboy Club is an obvious copy of Mad Men though.
More stool from the Baby Boomers designed to convince themselves that the rest of us are losers like them. Sorry BB’s, Our clothes were cooler, the cars we built ourselves were cooler, we had better music,(all the way from the big bands to Chuck Berry) and almost all of us could pick up our own tab. Oh, about all those “Social Change” things you always brag about. The heavy lifting was done when you got here and started throwing temper tantrums. You guys are the only thing the Greatest Generation did wrong. And I don’t blame ‘em. They grew up during the depression, kicked the stool out of the Axis, won the cold war and made most of the “Social Changes” you guys think you made. They were tired after all that work. And when they tried to tell you stuff you said “Don’t trust anybody over thirty”. Keep rockin dudes.
Meh. I watched the first two episodes of Mad Men and it did nothing for me. I think its a chick show.
But while we’re here, the supporting cast of characters was fantastic on bewitched. I always cracked up when Aunt Clara would pop in and be standing on the fireplace mantle with her trademark dumbfounded exclamation “bduh bduh bduh…”
the so-called “accurate a look at the harsh realities of the airline industry and the social mores of the early 1960s” will not show one single person who smokes and the airline staffs will be ‘multi-cultural’…that’s called p.c. revisionism, not historical accuracy.
The original Bewitched switched Dicks on us partway thru its run
Elizabeth Montgomery was a beauty
Serena was the best.
In a sense Bewitched showed the first interracial marriage on tv. Think about it.