Silver screen to small screen

Movies which would make the best TV shows.


Hannibal, Fargo and Bates Motel have set a  trend for TV production: taking popular movies and reinventing them as long term TV shows. With that in mind, The Stand suggests some other films crying out for a small screen makeover.

Blade Runner: Crime procedurals are packed with cliches. Every year a crop of new crime shows appear and most of them get cancelled. Blade Runner bends genre conventions, combining film noir hallmarks with the futuristic settings of science fiction. The film stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a hard boiled detective hunting down advanced robots called replicants (including Rutger Hauer, one of my weird crushes). The brooding detective and mysterious love interest aren’t new but the science fiction twist would make edge of your seat viewing every week.

Tank Girl: Many of you won’t have seen Tank Girl, but this cult classic would make the perfect TV show. Based on a comic book, the film is set in a post-apocalyptic world where water is rationed. Tank Girl (a.k.a. Rebecca) is a resistance fighter with dyed hair, an armoured tank, and a mutated kangaroo for a boyfriend. The film is completely insane but a little bit of insanity would work wonders on the small screen. Kick ass heroines like Daenerys Targaryen and Michonne are dominating the screen, and fearless Tank Girl would slot right in to that roster. 

Interview with the Vampire: Unless you live in a cave, you’ll know that vampires are a big deal. I have been somewhat of a vampire connoisseur since first watching Buffy when I was 10. As far as I’m concerned, Anne Rice is the definitive source on our fanged friends. Suck on that, Stephenie Meyer. Interview with the Vampire depicts Louis recounting his history as a vampire, from his death at the hands of the charismatic Lestat (my favourite member of the undead) to their homoerotic adventures across the world. Think True Blood without the endless love triangle. The “interview” of the title would be a framing device, kind of like How I Met Your Mother with more blood and less romance.

Boogie Nights: The only question about this one is why HBO haven’t already snapped it up. Boogie Nights follows the ins and outs (literally) of 70s/80s porn stars. It has all the hallmarks of an HBO show: cool music, vintage fashion, moral ambiguity and sex between beautiful people who don’t remotely resemble the plastic clones currently dominating the porn industry. The most popular shows of the last decade challenge audiences with unlikeable characters and painfully realistic scenarios. I can’t think of a better setting for that kind of programming than the bizarre world of pornography. 

Mean Girls: Teen shows are suffocating our TV screens but Mean Girls could easily become the most popular of the lot. Upon release 10 years ago (makes you feel old, huh?) the film became an instant classic, spawned popular phrases and launched the careers of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. The popularity of the film was due to the clever script by former SNL head writer Tina Fey. Now that 30 Rock has ended, Tina Fey is out of a job; I’m pretty sure the funniest woman in America could successfully bring The Plastics to a small screen near you. As an added bonus, Lindsay Lohan has aged so much in the past 10 years that she could easily play the mother of the one of the main cast.

 

Image courtesy of arcadesushi.com