Best TV Reboots and Revivals (Since 2000)

by Danielle Turchiano, Senior Editor – September 1, 2022

Everything old can be new again with the right approach. At least, that's what television executives across broadcast and cable networks and streaming platforms hope. After all, there is already a proven built-in audience for series that came and went years ago, and sometimes the fans of those shows are actively clamoring for more.

So, it should be no surprise that as the volume of new television shows continues to creep up (hitting a record high 559 original scripted, English-language series alone in 2021), the number of reboots and revivals among those series also continues to grow. The question for many executives, writers, and producers seems not to be, should we return to this previous world, but rather, when and how?

Rebooting a television series means keeping the original premise and tone of a previous series intact for a new iteration, but creating brand new characters and story arcs, sometimes including a new setting and time period. Sometimes these series are also called remakes.

A revival is a series that picks up the same characters and world from the original series but tells new stories with them, meeting them at a new point in their lives. Sometimes revival series are also called continuation series, depending on the timeframe that has passed between the end of the original and the start of the return.

Using the word "reimagining" to describe a series is supposed to signify that other material from the previous series is the source material for the new version, but often, the Powers That Be just seem to just like it better and use it colloquially, loosening the definition.

It all may be a slippery slope. And that doesn't even take into account spin-offs and prequels!

Here, Metacritic highlights the best scripted, live-action reboots and revivals since 2000, ranked by Metascore. It should be noted that if a series is listed as a new season of the same original show on our website, the Metascore listed below is for its first revival season, not the series overall. And yes, we call out which series are reboots and which are revivals!

11 of 22 photo by Hulu

75 Veronica Mars (Hulu, 2019)

(tied at #10)
revival of Veronica Mars (UPN/CW, 2004-07)

Veronica Mars has had quite the television journey overall: It debuted in 2004, during the UPN network's final years and then outlived that network to join the new network that came from its merger with The WB (The CW), only to be canceled after that season. A fan-funded film followed seven years later, and five years after that, the show was revived for one more season on Hulu. Sometimes referred to as a limited series revival and sometimes considered the fourth season of Veronica Mars overall, in it, Veronica (Kristen Bell) is surprisingly living in Neptune, Calif. as an adult and less surprisingly living with Logan (Jason Dohring) and working with her father (played by Enrico Colantoni). At first her cases seem just as simple, even if more costly, than when she was a teen sleuth, but soon bombings during spring break reveal much more complicated criminals, including a cartel and corrupt politicians. And she has to deal with a terrible personal loss that could change everything for her, too.

“A grown-up Veronica Mars, in the hands of the showrunner Rob Thomas, also means a grittier, more violent Veronica Mars. The upgrade doesn’t always work. ... Still, her new adventures make for an incredibly bingeable whodunit, and the biggest strength of the show continues to lie in Veronica and Keith’s relationship.” —Shirley Li, The Atlantic

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