TV to See: Can They Rebuild Her? The Remake of “Bionic Woman”
by
findingDulcinea Staff
Desperate for that next big hit, TV studios have been mining the past for ideas. Fall 2007 saw the premiere of the remake of “Bionic Woman.”
In the original late ‘70s series, perky, blonde tennis pro Jaime Sommers (played by Lindsay Wagner, probably best known today as the spokeswoman for Sleep Number Beds), received bionic prosthetics for her ear, arm and both legs after a catastrophic parachuting accident. After some difficulties—the initial rejection of her bionic parts, some brain damage and the loss of her relationship with fiancé Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man—Jaime adjusted to her new lifestyle and had numerous wacky adventures battling fembots, aliens and assorted assassins.
Source: Bionic Woman Files
But contemporary film and TV execs seem to have determined that audiences don’t want their action heroes to be perky and wacky; they want them dark and moody. (Hey, it works for Batman, doesn’t it?) The reinvented Jaime Sommers (played by Michelle Ryan) is a frustrated brunette bartender raising her troubled teenage sister. When a truck slams into her car, her scientist fiancé arranges for synthetic replacements for Jaime’s destroyed body parts. Freaked out by her new superpowered physique, her indentured servitude to the mysterious organization that funded the cyborg procedure, and various indications that her subsequently murdered fiancé had been plotting all along to experiment on her, Ryan’s angry rebel is a far cry from Wagner’s happy camper.
Source: NBC.com
American enthusiasm for the remake quickly waned, and the writers’ strike put the show on hiatus. Initial reactions in the U.K. have been warm, possibly because British actress Ryan used to appear on long-running soap, “EastEnders,” and also starred in the well-received 2007 miniseries “Jekyll.”
Meanwhile, back across the pond, the networks continue the unearthing of old material. Knight Rider, anyone?
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