by Lisa H Warren

Created on: January 09, 2009

When old television shows are turned into new movies it is usually because those shows were successes in their day. While I certainly can't speak for all viewers and movie-goers, I can speak for myself and others who share my sentiments.

What Hollywood often doesn't seem to understand is that successful television shows have a certain combination of elements that cannot be successfully recreated for original viewers; or created anew for a new generation of viewers.

Beloved, old, television shows were that because they had that special combination of actors who, in the eyes of viewers, WERE the characters they played. It was usually the actors who made those characters memorable and likable. It was usually a combination of those actors' acting and their characters, who interacted and fit so well with the other actors/characters, that resulted in a perfectly cohesive and in-sync cast. Beyond the individual acting and characters, and even beyond the interaction of various members of any cast, the most loved television shows usually had a kind of underlying (or between-the-lines) portrayal of the relationship between the characters, even though each week's script may not have put that relationship into the dialog.

The success of television programs is also often tied to the era in which the program is popular. "Leave It To Beaver" (that so-often cited symbol of late 1950's and early 1960's America) was a snapshot of the average American family in the era in which the show was popular. Although, of course, there has always been the cynical segment of the population who always saw programs like that one as "unrealistic"; the fact is many viewers at that time saw it as a reasonable portrayal of the American family. As programs like "Leave It To Beaver" have settled farther and farther back into television (and American) history, however, the preferences and values of viewing audiences have changed. Story lines from earlier eras don't always make good story lines for present-day audiences, but changing the "flavor" of old television shows in order to "update" them for today's audiences simply means making a movie that has little to do with the old television show (other than, perhaps, the names of the characters).

There's also that difficult-to-overcome and ingrained thinking of viewers of old tv shows that can make accepting new actors as old characters pretty much impossible. Jerry Mathers IS Beaver Cleaver, and nobody else can ever be that character. Hannah-Barbera's

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