When someone remakes a TV show or a movie, they often go more serious or darker. Is it because producers and directors feel they have to go "serious" to justify a remake? Do we live in more cynical times? Do the producers feel that they can't make a quality show that also happens to be light?

Kenneth Johnson, the creator of the original Bionic Woman series in the '70s (a spinoff of The Six Million Dollar Man), tells the L.A. Times that he's worried about the remake. I guess I would, too, if an NBC exec called my show "kind of cheesy." Although Johnson has been impressed with the work of producer David Eick on Battlestar Galactica, he's not so sure they're doing the right thing with the remake of his show.

"I'm sorry to hear they went in that other direction. Friends of mine who've read the script felt it was not what we'd done before, that it was not the same direction."

This sort of reminds me of when the first Batman movie came out, and Adam West was irked they didn't ask him to play the role again.

The article points out that when times change (politically, socially, culturally), then the way that TV shows operate have to change too. That probably doesn't matter when it comes to sitcoms like According To Jim or to reality shows, but when you have a TV show dealing with espionage and fights and politics and terrorism and action, then you're going to see changes. Besides, if they were just going to remake The Bionic Woman, with the same tone and outlook, what would be the point?