News broke recenntly that a reboot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is on the way to television. Joss Whedon is returning and others involved with the angsty 90s show might too. Reportedly, they plan to tell a whole new story from a different perspective, and rumor has it there will be lots of changes.
Whether it will be any good remains to be seen. There can be advantages to breathing new life into a franchise, other times not. Something special often gets lost that second time around and the integrity of the original can be marred.
Generally, that risk hinges on a series’s stature in pop culture. Enough time can pass and a show or movie can get a fresh coat of paint; or some stuff can fade away, having made little impact and not proving its worth, and gather up steam for a comeback. In the case of Buffy, the latter instance was true at its inception at The WB, picking up the pieces salvageable from the Kristy Swanson movie and creating a money making tapestry that defined a generation.
In the former instance, Buffy hasn’t really been gone that long. After it went off the air, it lingered in syndication, and the Buffyverse soldiered on in the final season of Angel. Then it kept going in comic book form and still is, in fact. Joss Whedon never really let the slayer go long enough to warrant a revisit.
More than that, reimagining the Buffy template is not a new idea. Actually, it appears to be a trend lately in serial dramas down to the fantasy/sci-fi/action elements and clever dialogue. Merely a result of cashing in on a formula or not, that trend has given us some binge-worthy TV in the last decade devoted Buffy fans can really appreciate. What follows are five of the best shows those folks ought to catch up on.
5. Continuum
Kiera Cameron (Rachel Nichols) is a cop who lives in a progressively advanced not-too-distant future with her loving husband and son, where the world is run by corporations. At the top of the heap is elderly billionaire and tech genius Alec Sadler (William B. Davis), her boss and the target of terrorist rebels. When a group of the most dangerous among them, called Liber8, initiate a time jump at their execution, they and Cameron are flung back to the past — our present day. Stuck there and relying on her wits and technology she brought with her, she must help the police to stop Liber8 from changing the future if she ever hopes to see her family again. Her only ally? The young self of Alec Sadler (Erik Knudsen) before he becomes an Elon Musk-style oligarch.
Continuum was a riveting show with a timely plot right from the headlines; production coincided with the one-versus-the-99 debate and the Wall Street protests. It was also sharp and savvy, containing seemingly endless twists and plot threads. Currently available on Netflix, Continuum has 42 episodes of nonstop action and story, and it gives you so much to think about you might even forget Buffy.
4. Being Human
What happens when a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost live in the same house? All sorts of groovy drama and grisly thrills. A modern suburban take on the old haunted house play meets a little House of Frankenstein, two male nurses, vampire Aidan (Sam Witwer) and werewolf Josh (Sam Huntington) learn they share their home with the ghost of a young woman, Sally (Meaghan Rath). They figure out a way to coexist and become as close as family while being steeped in each other’s subcultures, amid a slew of complications and crises they all bring to the table.
Based on the BBC TV show of the same name, the American version was adapted for Syfy Channel in 2011 with a darker tone Buffy-ites might be more attuned to. The lead actors are great and there is copious room in the crowded but fleshed out universe for the characters and their worlds to develop satisfyingly.
3. Lost Girl
Lost Girl captures the essence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer exceptionally. Anna Silk plays Bo, a mysterious woman with no knowledge of her past until she finds out she’s a succubus who feeds off sexual energy. Bo is one of the Fae, a community of beings from myth and folklore, who have been living among humans all this time. She learns about the governing traditions of Fae and goes on adventures with her close friend and confidant Kenzie (Ksenia Solo). All the while, Bo sustains herself by indulging in carnal passion and fights her darker urges.
A groundbreaking show, it pushed the envelope in more ways than Buffy. The latter had LGBT characters but Lost Girl put one firmly in the complex leading role. To survive, Bo had to be bisexual and promiscuous. At different times, her lover was a werewolf cop (Kris Holden-Ried) and then a doctor (Zoie Palmer). Love scenes were steamier and more frequent, sometimes including more than two individuals.
This show had a heart of gold with a jaunty balance between horror and humor, never taking itself as seriously as the soap opera that was Buffy. Including cameos by Linda Hamilton and Eric Roberts, Lost Girl is one for your queue.
2. iZombie
Liv Moore (Rose McIver) is not your typical morgue assistant: secretly she is a zombie who eats brains to stay in control. Said brains belong to murder victims and pass on memories and personality traits she uses to solve cases. Eventually, she discovers threats and conspiracies brewing in Seattle’s zombie community related to the massacre at a boat party that turned her.
Based on the Vertigo comic by Chris Roberson and Michael Allred, iZombie carries on Buffy’s tradition of monsters meet girl with real-life problems in charming fashion. There is a similar, if not more light-hearted, tone – – and as much snappy dialogue full of pop culture references. Yet, light-hearted or not, show romances are complicated, bordering on toxic.
Characters, on top of that, appear modeled after those from The Buffyverse. Liv’s love interest Major is basically Angel. Ben, one part close friend and sidekick and another part a dash of Watcher or advocate, is an amalgamation of Xander and Giles. And you can’t miss Blaine’s passing resemblance, both in looks and personality, to Spike.
iZombie makes it home on The CW, the conglomeration of UPN and The WB (both Buffy’s network TV roosts), and is streaming on Netflix. It’s binge-worthy and worth your time.
1. Supergirl
Kara Zor-El makes it to Earth later than expected and decides to follow in her cousin Superman’s footsteps. She makes a life for herself in National City as a reporter by day and superpowered crime fighter by night — often the only one standing between the planet and certain doom.
Based on characters appearing in DC’s Multiverse and occupying its own corner of the CW’s Arrowverse, Supergirl is the show more like Buffy than any other entry on this list. Like The Slayer, The Girl of Steel hopped from one network (CBS) to the other (CW) and stayed strong with its quality and audience.
The eclectic cast of characters and alien races, coupled with its ties to DC TV’s parallel worlds, provides an element of diversity surpassing that of Buffy, Lost Girl, or iZombie. That and nebulous potential when it comes to story ideas and plot threads. Supergirl is a show with a complicated, well-acted female lead in a time when Wonder Woman is the breakout star of the struggling DCEU. Still on the air and showing no sign of growing stale, it’s a wonder anyone is considering a Buffy reboot at all.
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