The unique Melrose Place debuted to 16 million viewers and have become a primetime-soap favourite with its outlandish plot twists. The Fox sequence’s 2009 CW revival, nonetheless, scored simply 2.3 million viewers with its premiere and ultimately dropped to 860k viewers.
Sunday (April 13) marks the fifteenth anniversary of the newer Melrose Place’s first season finale and sequence finale, not that many viewers will even keep in mind. So what went fallacious? Let’s check out why the second technology of this TV cleaning soap did not make a splash.
The sequence had too few originals.
For starters, valuable few individuals who hung across the authentic Melrose Place house complicated returned for the revival. Melrose Place creator Darren Star didn’t take part within the replace, leaving screenwriters Todd Slavkin and Darren Swimmer as showrunners. (Star instructed Vulture in 2024 that he considers Hollywood’s reboot fixation “horrible,” including, “I’d moderately fail with a recent concept than do a reboot. It appears like a product.”)
The newer Melrose solely featured two returning stars at first: Laura Leighton as Sydney Andrews and Thomas Calabro as Michael Mancini. Finally, Josie Bissett and Daphne Zuniga guest-starred in later episodes, reprising their roles as Jane Andrews and Jo Reynolds, respectively. The CW ultimately received Heather Locklear, who had resisted returning to the position of Amanda Woodward, to hitch the revival midway via the season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVCROJSCEoU
The revival as an alternative stuffed its solid with relative unknowns, together with Katie Cassidy, Stephanie Jacobsen, Michael Rady, and Jessica Lucas. Ashlee Simpson was most likely the one series-regular solid member with identify recognition. And in contrast to stars of the unique Melrose Place, together with Marcia Cross, Kristin Davis, Lisa Rinna, and Alyssa Milano, not one of the revival’s solid members have turn out to be family names.
It was met with jeers by critics.
The Melrose revival additionally didn’t make a lot of an impression with critics. The Star-Ledger’s Alan Sepinwall stated the present “embraces what it’s: a trashy remake of one of the crucial memorably trashy hits in primetime historical past.” IGN’s Amanda Sloane Murray stated it’s “one responsible pleasure you received’t need to really feel too responsible about.” However USA Right this moment’s Robert Blanco stated the solid was “your typical CW assortment of fairly, hard-bodied younger issues, most of whom can’t act their means out of a Birkin bag.”
Followers weren’t taken by the twists.
The most important for the present’s success, nonetheless, gave the impression to be that the revival’s bids for watercooler immortality had been a wash. Viewers simply reacted to twists and turns with shrugs. The sequence premiere resurrected Sydney solely to kill her off once more, leaving her lifeless physique floating within the pool within the first 10 minutes to kick off an overarching thriller, however a portion of the premiere’s viewers didn’t even end the episode. Equally, Locklear’s Amanda made her villainous debut in Episode 10, however Melrose Place’s scores continued to fall.
Solid member Colin Egglesfield instructed TV Insider in 2022 that the revival had a little bit of an identification disaster, making an attempt to be an excessive amount of to too many individuals. “I believe what occurred with Melrose Place was it was so completely different from the unique,” he stated. “The unique was a bunch of 20- and 30-year-olds dwelling in an house complicated in L.A. It was extra concerning the relationship between these six folks and courting and their jobs. … The reboot was a bit too bold. It was nearly like three or 4 completely different exhibits crammed into one. I believe they tried an excessive amount of. Folks didn’t know the right way to join with it. That’s why it didn’t resonate.”
What does this imply for the following Melrose Place sequence?
So, might Hollywood be taught from the errors of 2009’s Melrose Place? As of April 2024, one other Melrose reboot was being shopped round to networks and streamers, with Locklear, Leighton and Zuniga connected, as Deadline reported on the time.
“That is gonna be completely different as a result of it’s the unique solid,” Bissett stated of a deliberate reboot in a 2021 interview with The Seattle Occasions. “Melrose is a tricky present to reboot until it’s with the unique folks.”
Even with extra O.G. stars on board, one other Melrose would have its work minimize out for it, in response to authentic solid member Jack Wagner. “I don’t assume it’s simple,” Wagner instructed Us Weekly final month. “I actually don’t assume it’s simple to take such an enormous present like Melrose Place and attempt to recreate it. It’s robust.”
Yeah, simply ask The CW!