The Real Reason These TV Show Reboots Bombed

The appeal of TV show reboots for studio executives is easy. On paper, filling up airtime with familiar brands is a much safer bet than taking a risk on something original. Audiences, on the other hand, aren't so prone to being automatically in love with reboots. For one thing, viewers can easily see through the cash-grab motivations that often drive these projects. They also tend to suffer in comparison to the beloved shows they're rebooting.

That isn't to say all TV reboots are doomed. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, for example, overhauled the She-Ra mythos with a series revival that stands on its own widely acclaimed merits. However, for every She-Ra, there's also a bunch of TV reboots that premiered to a lot of hype, only to end up being long forgotten. While the classic shows they were rebooting live on in reruns, these latter-day revivals are gathering dust. The shows on this list all took iconic characters and brand names from classic series and attempted to reimagine them in occasionally drastic ways. All these television reboots bombed — and here's why.

The 1983 miniseries V was so popular that it led to a series the following year — and was then rebooted as a sci-fi drama again in 2009. While the basic premise, which concerns aliens invading Earth, was kept intact, the show was reimagined to fit into a post-Lost TV drama landscape as well as the sociopolitical climate of the late 2000s. As noted by Reuters, the new take on V would be very much inspired by "post-September 11 emphasis on questions of trust and terror," giving the show topicality in addition to sci-fi spectacle.

This new version of V dropped in November 2009, when the first four episodes debuted before the show went on a four-month hiatus. Before its hibernation, V scored 9.20 million viewers. When it returned in March 2010, it fell to only 7.03 million. The erratic scheduling of V sealed its fate as a ratings disappointment. Artistically, the show also failed to meet expectations. "The series could never find its footing. At least half the cast was functionally useless...By the time V stumbled into the conclusion of its second season, it was beaten, battered, a mere shell of a TV show. The stage was set for a whimpering final act," Entertainment Weekly reflected in reviewing V's season two finale.

That finale ended up V's final episode, as ABC canceled the once highly hyped program in May 2011, per TVLine. As it turned out, no amount of topicality could keep this 21st-century take on V on the air.

In February of 2020, director Jeff Wadlow turned the hit TV show Fantasy Island into a low-budget horror movie — and those who thought this was the first time someone tried to revive the Fantasy Island brand would be mistaken, although they could easily be forgiven. In 1998, a reboot of the program, also entitled Fantasy Island, was spearheaded by Bob Josephon. This time, the role of Mr. Roarke, previously played by Ricardo Montelbaum, was assumed by Malcolm McDowell. Roarke's assistant Tattoo was traded out for a trio of newly-created helpers, and the new Fantasy Island TV show would also carry a much darker tone than the original, though as the Sun-Sentinel observed, the formula remained largely the same: "A seaplane full of vacationers arrives, all harboring a customized dream, which is realized to some extent during their stay on the mystical isle."

Putting a darker spin on Fantasy Island was only one of the problems this reboot faced — it also suffered from ratings so low that it couldn't even finish its one-season run on its original network, ABC. "The '98 reboot was canceled midway through its 13-episode run but finished out the season on UPN and the then-Sci-Fi Channel," the Hollywood Reporter recalled. Going off the air after just 13 episodes, this new take on Fantasy Island was anything but a dream come true.

A hit spinoff of The Bionic Man in the '70s, The Bionic Woman was given a brand new lease on life with a 21st century series reboot. Starring Michelle Ryan, this show's tone was described as "a serious and intense take on the story, filled with lots of pathos and drama" in comparison to the campy tone of the original. When it premiered in September 2007, initial reviews were negative and tended to emphasize the behind-the-scenes woes the show faced. "It has been through a series of writers and producers, so it's no surprise that what finally lands is a little messy," remarked The Age. 

Bionic Woman's problems only worsened during the 2007-2008 Writer's Guild of America Strike. The series had managed to film only eight episodes prior to the strike shutting down production. To make matters worse, outlets like MovieWeb reported early on that Bionic Woman likely wouldn't return if production didn't resume quickly. Universal Television initially responded to this by reassuring publications like TV Guide that those rumors were false, but as the strike went on,  Bionic Woman's prospects for further seasons withered. NBC never officially canceled the show, but in March 2008, executive producer David Eick told SyFy that Bionic Woman was indeed dead. Not even enhanced abilities were enough to stop this show from being destroyed by an upended production schedule.

The high-tech automobile KITT zoomed back onto the airwaves with the 2008 Knight Rider reboot. "The biggest movies last summer were based on a toy, a super-hero comic, and a theme-park ride," then-NBC chairman Ben Silverman told Entertainment Weekly. "We wanted the same kind of blockbuster franchise for TV as you see in today's movie theaters." Unfortunately, Knight Rider would not end up living up to the big-screen models it was built to evoke.

A few weeks into the show's run, the new Knight Rider was greeted with mixed word-of-mouth and struggling ratings. After its viewership sank to 5.124 million viewers (per TV By The Numbers), it went back to the shop for a retooling. "We're moving away from the terrorist-of-the-week formula and closer to the original, making it a show about a man and his car going out and helping more regular people, everymen," showrunner Gary Scott Thompson told the Hollywood Reporter. The move was a microcosm of the biggest problem Knight Rider faced — it struggled to satisfy either longtime fans or newbie viewers. It was no surprise that, three months after it debuted, NBC reduced the show's episode count by three installments (per TV Series Finale). After those aired, NBC simply neglected to renew this new Knight Rider model for a second season.

Nowadays, The Fugitive is more commonly associated with an incredibly popular Harrison Ford thriller. However, it was originally a TV show starring David Janssen in the 1960s. Years after the Ford-headlined blockbuster turned the name into a hot property again, a reboot of the TV show starring Wings veteran Tim Daly landed on CBS in 2000. "CBS is resurrecting the franchise with a pilot that cost an estimated $6 million and a series that will revolve around location shooting," Post-Gazette reported before the show aired. Clearly, the network had confidence that a new Fugitive on the small screen could continue the success seen by the movie.

The Fugitive scored solid reviews from critics, including an A- grade from Entertainment Weekly. However, it was doomed by the decision to put it in a Friday night time slot. Even Daly expressed concern to the Post-Gazette, saying, "I think [The Fugitive] deserves the widest possible audience. I don't know if we'll get that on Friday." In the end, Daly's ratings fears came true, and the show was canceled after a single 22-episode season. This take on The Fugitive didn't last long, but at least it got good critical marks — that's more than can be said for Quibi's attempt to revive the property yet again in 2020.