This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Netflix is hoping that you've just been dying to know what has happened to the Tanner family in the 20 years since "Full House" was canceled.
Turns out D.J. (Candace Cameron Bure) is the widowed mother of three boys. She moves back into the Tanner family house in San Francisco, where she gets help raising her brood from her sister Stephanie (Jodie Sweetin) and old pal Kimmy (Andrea Barber). "Fuller House" — now in production — will begin streaming on Netflix in 2016.
What an original idea to bring it back! This sort of thing has never been done before, right?
Wrong.
What "Fuller House" is to "Full House," "The New Leave It to Beaver" was to "Leave It to Beaver" from 1984-1989. The stars of the original series (1957-63) — Jerry Mathers, Tony Dow, Barbara Billingsley — returned as older versions of themselves. Single father Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver even moved into the old family home to raise his two sons.
So … not such an original idea at all. Although that may be the point for "Fuller House."
"It's a show that very much is in the spirit of the original," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos.
It's clearly not a question of quality. The fact that the original series was terrible apparently played no part in this decision.
Don't believe me? Go back and watch an episode. "Full House" was badly written, badly acted schmaltz. It was held captive to the cute-but-talentless Olsen twins — who, as of this writing, have not agreed to make even guest appearances on "Fuller House."
Is the impending return of "Full/Fuller House" an indication that Hollywood has suddenly run out of ideas? That it has to resort to revivals for lack of anything original?
Nah. American TV has been pirating itself for decades. These are hardly the first examples of old shows becoming new shows.
Heck, "The Brady Bunch" was revived multiple times — as a variety show ("The Brady Bunch Hour"), a TV movie and spinoff sitcom ("The Brady Girls Get Married"/"The Brady Brides"), a holiday TV movie ("A Very Brady Christmas") and an hourlong drama ("The Bradys").
We are, however, going through a spate of revivals in the "Brady" vein — as opposed to remakes.
Over the years, lots of ideas have been recycled. "Perry Mason" returned with a new lead actor, we've had six iterations of "Star Trek" (with a seventh coming in 2017) and we saw a "Battlestar Galactica" that shared nothing more than a title, a basic premise and a bunch of character names with the original — just to name a few.
("Galactica" was one of TV's best remakes ever. The 1978-79 original was a cheesy "Star Wars" rip-off; the 2005-09 reimagined series was a critically acclaimed sci-fi classic.)
We've seen terrible remakes of "Charlie's Angels," "Get Smart," "Coupling" and "The Prisoner"; we've seen good, even great remakes of "The Office," "House of Cards" and "All in the Family" (a remake of the Britcom "Till Death Do Us Part").
And more are coming. Will Smith is developing a remake of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," CBS is developing a remake of "MacGyver" and then there's "Fuller House" — a revival, as opposed to a remake, that's bringing back original actors playing their original characters.
And that's just one example of what we're either seeing right now or will be seeing in the next few months, including:
• Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the entire gang are back in ABC's "The Muppets," a direct successor to "The Muppet Show" (1976-81).
• "Heroes Reborn" is airing on NBC, with some of the same characters and lots of references to what happened during the original "Heroes" (2006-10).
• The Disney Channel's "Girl Meets World" features the teenagers from "Boy Meets World" (1993-2000) — Cory (Ben Savage) and Topanga (Danielle Fishel) — as the parents of a teenage daughter.
• Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) are returning in a six-episode "event series" that picks up "The X-Files" 13 years after that show ended a nine-year run.
• Showtime is reviving "Twin Peaks" for telecast sometime in 2016 — and the series is returning to the same time with at least some of the same characters.
• "The Comeback" made a comeback on HBO in 2014 — after the pay-cable channel canceled it after a single season in 2005. Lisa Kudrow returned as the same ex-sitcom actress down on her luck. And HBO has ordered a third season.
• Last year, we got a 12-episode season of "24," with Kiefer Sutherland returning as Jack Bauer, the same character he played for eight seasons (2002-10).
• Netflix brought back "Arrested Development" (2003-06) with the entire original cast two years ago and has confirmed that talks are under way for a fifth season.
• And Netflix recently announced it will bring back "Gilmore Girls" (2000-07), with original stars Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, for four 90-minute TV movies.
However, NBC's attempt to revive "Coach" (1989-97), with Craig T. Nelson returning as Coach Hayden Fox, was scuttled before it could get on the air.
Sometimes these things make less than zero sense. Fox has ordered a 10-episode revival of "Prison Break," which will air sometime in 2016 and will feature the return of series star Wentworth Miller, who played Michael in the 2005-09 original.
Michael was dead and buried when the series ended. But then the show already showed us the severed head of another character, Sara (Sarah Wayne Callies), only to decide later that she wasn't dead after all. So … minor details, apparently.
Why bring a canceled show back years — sometimes decades — after it left the air? Well, in an age when there's so much TV it's hard for even the best new shows to break out, revivals have a built-in audience.
Sarandos said Netflix was interested in "Fuller House" because "it never really went away. After its network run, it's been very successful in syndication. It has been very kind of cross-generational, where parents are watching the show with their kids.
"We got very excited about the idea of kind of the co-viewing audience, which is very rare in television today."
The streaming service has ordered 13 episodes, which will be released sometime in 2016.
And there's the hope that viewers and/or subscribers will want to reacquaint themselves with old TV friends.
"Seeing David [Duchovny] and Gillian [Anderson] back on the screen is incredibly exciting," Fox Entertainment chairman Gary Newman said of "The X-Files" revival. "Their chemistry is off the chart."
(Well, it's too early to say much about "The X-Files" revival; critics haven't seen an episode yet. But an extended scene screened for the Television Critics Association over the summer was so bad it seemed like a self-parody.)
A revival also can be a chance to wrap up storylines left hanging by unexpected cancellation. "Heroes" creator/executive producer Tim Kring said, "We didn't know we were going off the air" at the end of Season 4 — which ended with the world becoming aware that there are people with superpowers.
"And because we didn't get to have that fifth season, I did always have that in my mind that there was an unfinished nature to all of this," Kring said. "So, yeah, I had always wanted to tell the story of what happens in the world when the world discovers these people."
The best-case scenario is that the revival takes a show in new directions, that it has something original to say. ABC Entertainment chairman Paul Lee said his enthusiasm for "The Muppets" was because executive producer Bill Prady ("The Big Bang Theory") was "reinventing and reinvigorating this brand."
"What really blew us away about this was how incredibly original it felt," he said. "Who would have predicted that Kermit would be stuck on the 405 [freeway] in traffic, and Miss Piggy would be caking on the makeup because she's threatened by a younger pig?"
Who wouldn't want to see that?
Twitter: @ScottDPierce