And now, an item from the "Bad Ideas" desk: Producer Bryan Fuller is planning to resurrect the classic '60s television series The Munsters and has signed a deal with NBC to deliver a pilot episode, with the logline "Modern Family meets True Blood." Oy! While I love what Fuller did with Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies and even the short-lived Wonderfalls, I really don’t think the world needs another iteration of the Munster clan, especially one filtered through Fuller’s patented whimsy.
Actually, this has been tried once before to disastrous results. The Munsters Today ran from 1988 to 1991 for 72 episodes (which was two more than the original series), and I totally understand if you’ve erased it from your memory. Lord knows I’ve tried. A film version of the show — à la The Addams Family — had been planned by the Wayans brothers a few years ago, but that thankfully disappeared.
I know everything old is new again, but let’s leave the Munsters alone. The original show was very much of its time. Monsters were everywhere in the mid-1960s. Songs like "Haunted House" and "Monster Mash" were in heavy rotation on the radio. The Munsters and The Addams Family were on TV. Creepy, Eerie and Famous Monsters of Filmland were on the store shelves and, at the movies, even Frankie and Annette were romping on the beach with Boris Karloff and ghosts in invisible bikinis.
With the Twilight series still alive and kicking, we seem to be experiencing a less than stellar monster craze ourselves. Thankfully, the AMC series The Walking Dead is helping to set things straight. See? We already have zombies coming to our rescue. We don’t need to dig up The Munsters. Herman and family already live forever in syndication heaven. Let them rest in peace. They’ve definitely earned it. Besides, no one will ever be funnier than Fred Gwynne.
It would be great if they changed everything about the show, including the way the characters looked, and the family's relationships, and then still called it "The Munsters". That would rock. I like taking stories by Poe, like 'The Black Cat', and then changing the story so it's nothing like the original, but then calling the story "Poe's The Black Cat" and then selling it to people for money.
"Another great thing about being 70,000 light years away from the nearest Starfleet vessel is that once we finally get back to Earth, we can makeup bullshit stories. Off the top of my head: 'We met Amelia Earhart,' 'We singlehandedly eliminated most of the Borg fleet' or 'Paris and I turned into giant pink lizards and mated.'"
I'm the owner and editor of PlanetFury. You can also find me at PlanetEtheria.com