THE KILLING JOKE

[20.51 - French Time] Thank God NBC spared us another pathetic remake of a television classic when they passed the 2010 Rockford Files, starring Dermot Mulroney in the role popularized by James Garner. But for the 2010-2011 season, CBS and the CW stick to their new takes on Hawaii Five-O and Nikita.

We can have an acceptable notion of what these two shows will look like thanks to extended promos widely available. In Hawaii Five-O Alex O'Loughlin (Moonlight, Three Rivers) plays Steve McGarrett, a decorated Naval officer who returns to Oahu to investigate his father’s murder. He stays in Hawaii as a cop with his own task force.

The preview shows us basically an action-packed buddy movie, or Hawaiian Heat (a forgotten 1984 cop drama) with explosions and VFX. In January your humble servant wrote that a character like Wo Fat, the recurring archvillain of the original show, seemed unconceivable today in our politically correct world. And when James Marsters was announced as McGarrett's nemesis we supposed that he would rather be a "24 type terrorist mastermind".

Not only it resembles Hawaii Five-O (1968-1980) as much as, let's say, NCIS: Los Angeles looks like NCIS but the questions is: can they afford that every week?

http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/06/trailer-hawaii-five-o-.html#more

For the new Nikita, its owes more to Alias than to the Luc Besson movie or La Femme Nikita, the TV series. Ironically, Alias was more or less a mainstream LFN and there are now rumours that the J.J. Abrams show could also be remade! For the rest, just watch the trailer and please read what I wrote last month (http://tattard2.blogspot.com/2010/05/ne-cherchez-pas-la-femme-dans-la-nuit.html).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoTz17GWxjs