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The best revivals of classic TV shows

by Robert Freeman

Created on: May 29, 2009   Last Updated: September 19, 2010

When a show gets cancelled or the cast calls it quits, every avid fan of that show hopes that in some studio somewhere there are actors, a director, and a producer willing to bring their show back from the dead and onto their television screens again. To revive a show takes a lot (just ask the fans of CBS' cancelled show Jericho) because convincing broadcast company executives that what happened the first time won't happen again is a very hard thing to do. There are hurdles that must be leaped within the development stages of the revitalization process that often muddle efforts from progressing further, but if a show makes it through that difficult stage, then it's in for the hardest challenge of all: convincing the public that the new rendition of the show will be just as good or better then the original. Needless to say this hasn't stopped some shows from coming back with varied levels of success.

In the brief 60-70 year history of television broadcasting, there have been few shows that have amounted a successful comeback compared to the large amount that have tried and failed. The creators of the show "Land of the Lost" which originally aired in 1974 made it through the development stage of the comeback process but were unable to bring in the viewers during a failed 1991 resurgence. Now the show is trying to crawl back from the dead again with a movie being released this summer starring Will Ferrell and only time will tell how this second comeback will pan out. Land of the Lost may be a bad example of a revival attempt because it was never successful to begin with but revival doesn't get easier even if the show had some success the first time around; just ask the creators of the show "Knight Rider."

From 1982-1986 fans of this action packed television series were awed by the Camaro dubbed "Kit" as he and future Baywatch star David Hasselhoff rushed to save the day and performed dazzling stunts. Sadly the show reached only minor success and was cancelled, but to the delight of many Knight Rider fans, NBC revitalized the show in 2008. The only problem was NBC didn't put as much thought into this comeback as they should have and the second coming of Knight Rider only tarnished the name of the original series.

Though these shows didn't make it when they tried to comeback, other's have. Two of the most notable ones have to be "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica." Of those two, the least known has to be Battlestar Galactica but to the fans that watch this show

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