I gave the first episode of Riverdale a shot. I knew it'd be darker than the Archie comics, so none of the subject matter surprised me.
It definitely has a Twin Peaks vibe to it, especially the opening. It even starts off with a presumed-dead teenager at the water.
I suspect that it won't get as weird or supernatural as Twin Peaks. I'm not sure that it'll keep my interest otherwise. There's a lot of teen angst in it, and that only interests me for a little while. I may continue on with it and see how I feel.
I will say that it's an interesting hybrid of style. While the show ostensibly takes place in modern day, there are elements of the '50s that are fused into the setting: Old tailfin cars and malt shops can be found here. Considering David Lynch's obsession with merging the past with the present, it just adds even more to the Twin Peaks vibe.
I've seen the first three episodes. I've found it interesting enough so far. It's like Twin Peaks meets Dawson's Creek with Archie references. I think I just appreciate how bizarre that kind of premise is. It's not doing anything groundbreaking though. I probably wouldn't watch it if my wife wasn't into it, but it's not something I'm suffering through by any means.
Finished stranger things. Eh, the show is stupid. Pretty much every plot point was resolved in the most predictable and chliche way possible (small sort-of exception is the the handling of the Nancy lovestory), and it's as bad about important character invulnerability as it gets. The way it casually throws away lives of background characters is probably the worst part – each one of those has his own family too... I think altogether the last two episodes were disappointing, I could have still been more interesting.
Nonetheless still fairly enjoyable.
I think this is exactly what stranger things was going for though. Stranger Things wanted to recreate the feeling of the eighties films it homages. It's pure nostalgia.
From this perspective, cliches and predictability become almost a feature rather than a flaw. That doesn't mean they couldn't have done more interesting or surprising things with these formulas, but that'd make it a different kind of show.So what's with so many different TV shows now being remakes of old movies?
Fargo
Westworld
Evil Dead
Frequency
The Exorcist
School of Rock
Scream
A Series of Unfortunate Events (I know this was a book series before being a movie, but it was still a movie).
Bates Motel
I'm sure there's more.
I mean, there's always been movies that spawned TV shows; that's not new... it just seems like right now; a lot of the currently popular TV shows are based on (somewhat old) movies.
This isn't unique to TV, either. Almost all mainstream media is derivative today: Superhero stuff, Harry Potter, live-action remakes of Disney animation, huge advertisements for popular toys, etc.
Of the top 10 highest grossing films for the past 3 years (
2016,
2015,
2014) only 4 are original intellectual properties. The rest are remakes, reboots, or sequels. And many of the sequels are almost like remakes (Spectre shares a lot with OHMSS, The Force Awakens is A New Hope in a blender, Rogue One is an adaptation of the opening crawl of Star Wars), and in the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 it's a sequel to a reboot of an adaptation.
So, I think the answer is, this stuff makes money and is pretty reliable. Even terrible movies and shows still make money because people like the original stuff. If the money's practically guaranteed, why wouldn't people do it?
That said, I don't think this has to be as terrible as it sounds. For example, both seasons of Fargo are phenomenal and I think a lot of that awesomeness is the result of them trying to capture the tone and interests of the original film. I even think derivative stuff can result in stronger shows and movies because they can focus their efforts on more specific parts. They don't need to develop a new world or figure out the tone of their movie or invent tons of new characters, so they can focus their resources on the other parts (script, directing, cinematography, etc.)