After what has apparently been an intense and rather brief bidding war, Peacock has won Bel-Air, the gritty drama reboot of The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air that started life as a YouTube parody before Will Smith got involved, called up some people involved with the original Fresh Prince, and gave Morgan Cooper—the person behind the YouTube video—a chance to make it a real thing. According to Variety, Peacock is giving Bel-Air a two-season order, with Chris Collins serving as showrunner and co-writing with Cooper.
Peacock is a somewhat surprising destination for Bel-Air, since HBO Max not only has the whole original series but is putting together a reunion special for it. That being said, Peacock has become the one-stop shop for this kind of reboot, having already picked up new takes on Battlestar Galactica, Queer As Folk, Saved By The Bell, and Clueless—so maybe this makes perfect sense? Peacock has clearly found a lane, much like how Quibi landed on “give a famous person a TV show and maybe it’ll stick” and Apple TV+ went with “We definitely have something, even if you can’t quite come up with it off the top of your head just yet.”
The Variety story doesn’t say who will star in Bel-Air or when it might premiere, but as with literally everything else, it’s not like a whole lot of TV shows are being made right now anyway. Peacock has some time to figure this out.
19 Comments
But like why tho
2020 in a nutshell
Because new ideas are hard!!!!
I don’t quite get why we would need a serious version of a comedy but I am interested to hear what the theme song will sound like
A slowed down dramatic version of the original song, a la Johnny Cash’s rendition of “Hurt”.
It will be challenging for a tinkling, unaccompanied piano to capture the sound of DJ Jazzy Jeff, but they’ll find a way.
It’ll sound exactly like leonard cohen’s hallelujah.
Sigh…sure. Why not.
I concur with and wholly appreciate your general apathy on this matter. I mean, like, whatever, right?
But how does Jazz getting LITERALLY thrown out of the house play these days? Also, what is the 2020s equivalent to Tom Jones in the 1990s?
Tom Jones
It’s just that mugging episode, but then just basically adapts Death Wish over the course of its run and goes on to more faithfully adapt the original novel than any of the prior movies.
We have two options here:
Either we don’t look at it and then maybe it will go away.
Or we all pretend we absolutely love it and then it’ll definitely go away.
I am setting up my “Fresh Prince of Bel Air Reboot” notifications right away!
We can create a Fresh Prince of Bel Air Reboot community!
I feel like there are some TV execs who don’t realize that a viral parody trailer is not in fact a good idea for an actual show, even if the response on the video was “They should actually make this!”The only way this can work is if they come from a place that the idea of a “serious” Fresh Prince of Bel Air is silly and make a show that is so super self serious that its actually a funny
I see the comments on this story are every bit as Pitchforkian as I would have expected.
that started life as a YouTube parody Parody? Send-up, reboot, homage, maybe. Parody? No.
Speaking of Apple TV+, I hate it, but if you have it (you probably do even if you don’t know it), Ted Lasso is SHOCKINGLY good. It’s poignant and touching and heartfelt in a way I wasn’t expecting. It is a POSITIVE comedy, which is kind of something the world needs right now.The show has won me over the way the characters wins over others in the show. I know this sounds like an ad, I’m just gobsmacked at how much I love it.