Reincarnation
Uh-oh. Here we go again.
Deadline.com reports that the CW and Warner Bros Television have a deal to bring back (yet again) Dark Shadows.
Fans of the classic 1966-71 ABC daytime series—as well as devoted readers of this website—will recall that this has been attempted a few times before with little or no success. There is something irresistible about the idea of a favorite of one’s youth being brought back in a way that can take advantage of modern-world technology and sensibility—especially in the case of a series like Dark Shadows that felt to us like it should have continued on much longer, despite the fact that creator/producer Dan Curtis himself confessed that he and his team had long since run out of ideas and energy for the five-day-a-week/fifty-two-weeks-a-year series.
And indeed the series, like several of its most memorable characters, has steadfastly refused to die. There were two feature film outings by the original team, one during the show’s run and one after. There was the 1991 prime-time NBC revival that became an innocent casualty of blanket TV coverage of the Persian Gulf War. In 2005 a rough pilot was made for a potential CW series, but it never made it to broadcast air. Most hopeful of all was the 2012 feature film directed by none other than Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, both avowed fans of the original series. Though I myself gave it an embarrassingly high score in my indulgent review, many hard-core fans felt let down by its campy approach.
In the end, the most successful revival of the series has been the series of audio dramas and dramatic readings by actors mostly from the original cast and released by the UK’s Big Finish Productions. Of all the attempts to bring back Dark Shadows, theirs has been the one most concerned with continuity and respect for the fans.
So will this new version be yet another disappointment for the graying die-hards who ran home from school in the 1960s for their supernatural fix and the younger converts? At the risk of sounding like a gullible, cock-eyed optimist, I have to say that it looks promising.
Dan Curtis passed away in 2006, but his daughters Tracy and Cathy are among the producers of the new version. The pilot’s writer is Mark B. Perry, whose writing and producing credits run the gamut from Northern Exposure and The Wonder Years to Ghost Whisperer and Revenge. He is old enough to have been an original fan of The Dick Van Dyke Show and, yes, Dark Shadows. The Deadline piece includes the de rigueur line: “As a kid, Perry ran home from school to catch the gothic soap.” Particularly encouraging is his expressed aim to do for Dark Shadows what Star Trek: The Next Generation did for the original Star Trek. That is exactly what a true fan would want. Don’t remake or “re-imagine” the original series, as the 1991, 2005 and 2012 versions—and, for that matter, the 1970 and 1971 Dan Curtis movies—did. Just continue on in the same familiar universe with new characters, bringing back original characters where possible and when it makes sense. Star Trek is a good model for this, and there is also another more pertinent one: Doctor Who. In 2005 Russell T. Davies very successfully resurrected the classic BBC series by making it both a reboot and continuation at the same time. All the characters were new, including the Doctor because, after all, it had long been established that the Doctor regenerates periodically to be played by a new actor. Over time, though, some characters from the previous half-century re-appeared, including even the Doctor’s past incarnations. Thus, fans had the best of both worlds: something new and up-to-date but with a sense of continuity with the classic episodes they had loved.
Sadly, many of the original Dark Shadows actors are now gone, including Joan Bennett, Louis Edmonds, Grayson Hall and Barnabas Collins himself, Jonathan Frid. Happily, quite a few others are still around and working, including Nancy Barrett, David Selby, Kathryn Leigh Scott and Lara Parker. No doubt they would be available for supporting roles or cameos. Fans would presumably be understanding if certain key roles were recast or if characters were laid to rest off-screen. As Star Trek proved, just by having even one or two key characters return and be played by the original actors can make a huge difference to a sense of continuity and legitimacy.
And if Perry needs idea for where the storylines should go, he has plenty to work with. There is no lack of fan fiction out there—and even novels written by Lara Parker—that have expanded on the original screenplays. Perhaps even more helpfully, in a 1971 TV Guide article, Sam Hall, one of the series’ main scribes, revealed what would have eventually happened to the various characters if the TV show had continued.
The hard thing to get right will be the mood and tone. Given that this is, after all, the CW, there will be a temptation to play to a certain demographic in terms of plots and pacing and overall look. That will be the real test. Can Perry and company avoid doing to Dark Shadows: Reincarnation what the angsty teen soap Smallville did to the Superman mythos?
At this point at least, it sounds encouraging. Says Perry: “I also want to reassure the fans of the original that this version will treat the show’s mythology with the same reverence given to Star Trek, but will also make the show accessible for audiences who aren’t yet familiar with the macabre world of the Collinses. My plan is to take as few liberties as possible with the Dark Shadows canon, while bearing in mind a quote from a 1970s episode delivered by the inimitable Oscar-nominee Grayson Hall as Dr. Julia Hoffman: ‘The Collins family history is not particularly famous for its accuracy.’”
We shall do our best to hold you to that, Mr. Perry. And you get extra points for being aware that Grayson Hall was an Oscar nominee (for The Night of the Iguana).
Obligatory self-promotional plug: If you enjoy Dark Shadows, then you might also like reading my novel The Curse of Septimus Bridge, now available from major online booksellers.
-S.L., 12 September 2019
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