Bring back 'Futurama', but not to TV

Yet another adult cartoon is on the comeback trail. But is another life on TV the best we can hope for our favorite cancelled shows?

Scanning through Newsvine's TV category this morning, I read that 'Futurama', a long-cancelled animated TV series, may be getting a revival thanks in part to its popularity on cable and a rabid fanbase.

Currently a staple of the highly-rated Adult Swim block on Cartoon Network, the show originally debuted on FOX in 1999 but had a short lived run, despite its elite breeding as the brainchild of Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

Like its Adult Swim sister program, 'Family Guy', 'Futurama' is the second in a line of tossed-off Fox adult-oriented animated comedies now with another lease on life. Though Variety reports that no deals have been made, the magazine published that talks are "underway" to bring 'Futurama' - the story of a space-travelling regular guy and a cast of offbeat alients- back to its original home on Fox.

The news of 'Futurama's revival has me wondering: Are we taking the whole saving cult TV shows thing just a bit too far?

I may be biased by my apathy for the show in question. I'm a huge Simpsons fan, and I recall watching the original premier of 'Futarama' almost seven years ago. But I didn't get into it then, nor I have become enamored of it since it began incessantly airing on Adult Swim.

Don't get me wrong though- I'm as a huge a fan as anybody of the nearly overwhelming slew of classic- and not so classic- TV series that have come out on DVD over the past three years. In fact, just under a year ago I started a website called Network Landscape to chronicle and review the TV on DVD revolution.

My minor gripe instead lies not with the revival of great but cancelled shows, but rather with where these shows land on their second run. Instead of getting the whole cast back together, getting fans' hopes up, and re-airing a show, only to dump it in a bad timeslot on a network that has a long history of cancelling greats and exacting less-than-savory creative control, why not bring new shows back but release them direct to DVD instead?

There are some real advantages to releasing new episodes- or entire series- directly onto DVD, where fans have nearly universal access to rent and/or purchase them. A model like that would be a whole new thing for current networks to get their heads around, but given the huge profits to be had from sales and rentals, I have little doubt they could figure something out.

A direct-to-DVD strategy could also help networks combat file-sharing woes by delivering fans their content in the much-desired "time-shifting" format favored by millions of TiVo (and now Video iPod) owners around the country.

Of course, there are many questions- and with every push towards direct-to-DVD comes an equal one for direct-to-web, which in my view can complement a DVD strategy quite nicely. For more insight into the notion of original series running on the web, be sure to read Lost Remote blogger Steve Saffran's take on another soon-to-be cancelled Fox series, 'Arrested Development'. While that show has been offered new life on cable net Showtime, there are quite a few fans out there would, I think, would prefer to follow it to greener pastures like the ones Saffran describes.

So I say, keep the cancelled series revolution alive. But don't bring 'Futurama', or any other series, back to a place that didn't value it in the first place. Instead, go directly to the fans that kept the show alive in the and let them have their show where they want, when they want.

Back To Top