The Top 5 Best Television Reboots That I’m Pretty Sure Nobody Watched But Me

Reboots get an unfair rap. Some people say that reboots are signs that television networks and streaming services have run out of ideas. Personally, I don’t look at it that way. I always got really attached to characters in movies and TV shows growing up and I hated saying goodbye to them. The reboots of some of my beloved childhood television shows like Full House and Boy Meets World meant the world to me.

It’s been nice to see some of those familiar characters come back and get updated. Of course, sometimes it went horribly wrong (Roseanne), but more often than not, reboots put a more modern spin on classic stories by making them queerer. Hell, in some cases, it made them smarter, too.

The problem, of course, is that streaming services and networks went crazy greenlighting reboots and then cancelled them rather quickly, with few people watching some of them. Except, of course, for me. I’ve always been a television addict, and so a lot of these really obscure reboots tickled my fancy for the very brief time they were on. So I assembled my list of the five best television reboots (in order!) that I’m pretty sure nobody in the world but me watched before they were cancelled to explain to you why they’re absolutely worth watching.

5. Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return (Netflix 2017-2018)

Look, MST3K—the bizarre series in which a man is kidnapped by evil space villains who force him to watch bad movies as a science experiment and he survives by making fun of the movies with his robot friends—is a nerd cult classic for a reason. Coming from humble beginnings on local television in Minneapolis, the fact that it worked its way up to Netflix in 2017 is a pretty amazing achievement. The Netflix reboot united three absolutely brilliant people: hilarious comedian Jonah Ray, my single favorite comedian in the world Patton Oswalt, and my biggest nerd crush, the brilliantly funny and talented Felicia Day. You couldn’t ask for a better cast.

In the second season of the Netflix reboot, the show took on a theme, with every movie spoofed being a knock-off of a more famous movie, including 1988 E.T. knock-off Mac and Me and the 2013 film Atlantic Rim, which is a mockbuster knock-off of Pacific Rim. The decision to pick such a modern film and a mockbuster like Atlantic Rim was somewhat controversial with fans, but the show pulled it off brilliantly.

Unfortunately, after two years on Netflix, the show was cancelled and then tried to move to its own very expensive streaming service called Gizmoplex which only streamed MST3K and nothing else. Nobody really had the money for that, and the experiment ultimately failed. Still, the Netflix episodes are still up on Netflix, and you can’t beat the Ray-Oswalt-Day triple threat. This might be controversial, but I think they’re probably the best cast the show has ever had.

4. That ‘90s Show (Netflix 2023-2024)

I will continue to be a champion for That ‘90s Show, and you might remember that I previously put it on my list of best queer stoner TV shows and movies. The series, which picks up 20 years after That ‘70s Show, follows Leia Forman (Callie Haverda), daughter of Eric Forman (Topher Grace) and Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon) from That ‘70s Show, when she visits her grandparents Red (Kurtwood Smith) and Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp) in Point Place, Wisconsin for the 4th of July. She meets the neighborhood kids, whom she instantly becomes friends with. She convinces her parents to let her stay in Point Place, and the group of kids navigate summer in the mid-’90s together.

While That ‘70s Show wasn’t known for LGBTQ+ characters, I can think of at least two instances where one-off gay characters appeared as minor characters. That ‘90s Show deals with queerness more, tackling the fact that the ‘90s saw increased visibility of gay people and gay issues—and the fact that the 2020s have increased that visibility even more—by introducing the character of Ozzie Takada, Point Place’s sassiest gay kid. It’s true that everyone seems more tolerant of Ozzie’s homosexuality than people really were in the ‘90s, but it’s rather refreshing to see it so normalized, even if it is a bit anachronistic.

Sadly, That ‘90s Show was cancelled on Netflix after two seasons and, while there were originally reports that another outlet would pick it up, there hasn’t been any word on the show for several months, which seems to suggest it’s dead. Sadly, the series ends on a cliffhanger, and it looks like that may have to go unresolved, which is a real shame. While That ‘70s Show was more well-known for its brutally mean-spirited humor between friends who love to rag on each other, the humor on That ‘90s Show was a bit softer, and the characters seemed to be kinder and more loving towards each other. That gave it a different heart than the original, and it made the characters really endearing. So this show joins the long, long list of shows—many of them reboots—that I’ll never forgive Netflix for cancelling.

3. Mad About You (Spectrum, 2019)

The 1990s romantic sitcom Mad About You, about young couple Jamie (Helen Hunt) and Paul Buchman (Paul Reiser), was one of the few shows that I felt didn’t particularly need to be revisited. The 1999 series finale, where an adult version of Paul and Jamie’s daughter Mabel (played by Janeane Garofalo) takes us through the later years of her parents’ marriage, is one that I often hold up as one of the best sitcom finales of all time. But when the show did a reboot in 2019, they actually did an outstanding job with it. However, with the reboot appearing on an obscure streaming service, Spectrum, which no longer exists, not many people saw it. For a brief time it was picked up by Amazon Prime, but now you’d pretty much have to pirate it to watch it. (We would never suggest you do that, wink wink.)

The reboot picks up about 16 years after the original as Jamie and Paul’s daughter Mabel (now played by Abby Quinn) is leaving the nest to go off to college. With the couple now alone for the first time since their daughter’s birth, they have to adjust to being alone with each other again, putting their marriage to the test. Meanwhile, the ever-rebellious Mabel seems more interested in getting involved in activism at NYU than focusing on her studies.

Unlike most of the reboots on this list, the reboot of Mad About You didn’t really add a lot of queer content to the show, but to be fair, the original version of Mad About You had a fair amount of queer content to begin with for a show that aired in the 1990s. The original series had the recurring character of Paul’s lesbian sister Debbie Buchman (Robin Bartlett) and her life partner Dr. Joan Golfinos (Suzie Plakson). Sadly, Debbie and Joan don’t appear in the reboot, but since the original did a good job of advancing queer representation at a time when that was not the norm on television, we’ll give it a pass.

Also unlike the other reboots on this list, the Mad About You reboot seems to have only been designed to run for one season from the beginning, and it basically accomplished everything it set out to do. But sadly, the fact that it was on such an obscure streaming service and the fact that it’s no longer available has probably resulted in very few people having seen it.

2. Punky Brewster (Peacock 2021)

When NBC/Universal’s streaming service, Peacock, announced a modern reboot of 1980s sitcom Punky Brewster for 2021, I immediately had one question: “Who, besides me, has any interest in a Punky Brewster reboot?” As someone who grew up in the ‘90s, Punky Brewster did not air for its original run while I was growing up, but the decade-old reruns ran in syndication on my local television station at about 5 p.m. every day. The original series, about a young orphan adopted by an older single man, was as campy as ‘80s sitcoms get, but it had a lot of heart. But were Gen Xers who grew up on Punky Brewster even media savvy enough to find the show on the then-new streaming service Peacock?

In the reboot, Punky (Soleil Moon Frye) is now a divorced single mother working as a photographer like her late foster father Henry (George Gaynes), and is raising three kids: her biological daughter Hannah (Lauren Lindsey Donzis) and two adopted brothers Diego (Noah Cottrell) and Daniel (Oliver De Los Santos). While Punky is still on vaguely good terms with her rockstar ex-husband Travis (Freddie Prinze Jr.), he’s also frequently on the road and not the most dedicated father. Then, one day, while visiting her old foster home, Fenster Hall, she meets a young orphan girl named Izzy (Quinn Copeland) who reminds Punky a lot of her young self, and it becomes obvious that Punky has to foster this little next-generation Punky.

The reboot of Punky Brewster definitely added queer elements that the original never had. Punky’s best friend Cherie Johnson (played by an actress of the same name), from the original, was now an open lesbian. Furthermore, one of Punky’s adopted sons is a feminine boy who enjoys wearing makeup and nail polish and starts to question his gender identity, leading to some really intelligent and honest conversations about being an accepting parent of a gender-diverse child. The show also addressed some of the biggest issues from the original series, particularly the looming mystery of what happened to Punky’s mother that brought her to abandon young Punky in a grocery store.

But, like I said, it might have been difficult for viewers to find the show on a budding new streaming service, especially considering the age of the target audience. The Punky reboot was cancelled after a mere 10 episodes, leaving a really great show as just a flash in the pan. But those 10 episodes were really good, and it’s definitely worth checking out to this day. 

1. Saved by the Bell (Peacock, 2020-2021)

The original 1980s/1990s version of Saved by the Bell has aged like milk. Lead character Zack Morris’ (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) schemes were frequently manipulative and cruel and, at times, borderline rapey. In fact, there was a web series in the late 2010s called Zack Morris is Trash that explained why, as the title suggests, Zack Morris is trash. Beyond that, the show was cheap, unfunny, and sprinkled with dashes of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. And, even in the days before reboots were a big thing, Saved by the Bell had a terrible reboot in the later 90s called Saved by the Bell: The New Class which is best forgotten.

The 2020 Saved by the Bell reboot did something that pretty much no other reboot did: It made fun of the original show and fixed all of its problematic elements. In fact, the creator of Zack Morris is Trash was brought on as a staff writer for the reboot, making it a brilliantly self-aware series that completely understood the flaws of the original that it had to correct. Plus, it completely ignored all of the developments from Saved by the Bell: The  New Class, including the closing of rival school Valley High and the burning down of the beloved on-campus restaurant The Max, which was probably for the best.

In the reboot, Zack Morris, who became the governor of California as part of a scheme to get out of a $75 parking ticket, closes all of the underperforming schools in the state to slash the state budget. With poorer students now having no schools, Morris creates a program by which all of the former students at the closed schools are bussed into richer schools in richer neighborhoods, making Bayside High (the school the original Saved by the Bell took place in) the site of a class war between rich and poor students.

Rather than making a cishet, white man the lead of the series again, the lead character of the reboot is Daisy Jiménez (Haskiri Velazquez), an ambitious Latina student from a school called Douglas High that was one of the closed schools, moving her to Bayside. Zack Morris’ son, Mac Morris (Mitchell Hoog), is a character on the reboot, and he’s up to all of his father’s old antics from the original series, sometimes even reenacting some of the exact plots from the original series, but now the other characters—especially Daisy—call him on his outdated and manipulative antics.

While the original Saved by the Bell featured mostly white kids with one Latino character and one Black character, neither of whom ever talked about their heritage or culture, the reboot had a racially diverse cast of white, Black, and Brown students and frequently addressed racial issues. It even had a transgender main character named Lexi Haddad-DeFabrizio (Josie Totah) who exemplifies none of the common stereotypes about trans people. Lexi, one of the rich white Bayside kids, is a social climbing diva with an attitude who practically runs the school with her sharp tongue and mean-girl attitude. Yet, at the same time, her character is slowly starting to develop empathy for other people for the first time in her life, making her one of the show’s most well-rounded and complex characters. Lexi isn’t the only LGBTQ+ character on the show, as Daisy’s best friend Aisha Garcia (Alycia Pascual-Peña) slowly learns she’s bisexual, and there are recurring characters Spencer (Abraham Rodriguez) and Chloe (Ariela Barer) who run Prism, the school’s LGBTQ+ club.

As brilliantly funny, smart, meta, and diverse as Saved by the Bell was, it seemed to be poorly promoted and lasted only two seasons, then got cancelled with nobody ever really knowing it existed. Not a lot was left up in the air, but there were a few plot threads left as unresolved cliffhangers for an unproduced Season 3. It’s a shame because it might have been one of the first reboots to really fix a bad show, and it deserved a much longer lifespan than it got.

All photos courtesy of social media