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!

21 of 22 photo by Sci-fi/NBCU

89 Battlestar Galactica (Sci-fi, 2003-09)

(tied at #1)
reboot of Battlestar Galactica (ABC, 1978-79)

The 2003 miniseries that then went on to be a four-season drama essentially rebooted the 1978 series of the same title (a portion of which also debuted in theaters). Created by Ronald D. Moore, this new story chooses not to follow Richard Hatch’s Captain Apollo but instead sees Commander William Adama (Edward James Olmos) in charge of the titular ship (although Hatch does appear in this version of Battlestar Galactica in a different role). After multiple decades of war between the humans and Cylons, the humans' home is destroyed, much of humanity is wiped out, and malware has shut down most of the humans' fleet. But the survivors, including the new president (played by Mary McDonnell), band together to flee the Cylons and search for safety. The miniseries was nominated for three Creative Arts Emmy Awards, and the series it then spawned was nominated for 19 Emmy Awards, including the three it won (one for Outstanding Sound Editing and two for Outstanding Visual Effects).

“Perhaps the most refreshing thing about this re-imagined Battlestar is its darkness (and by that I don't just mean the show's dusky blue-and-brown visual palette). This new Battlestar…doesn't pretend that the aftermath of the mass destruction of most of humanity is anything but deeply scary.” —Maureen Ryan, Chicago Tribune

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