Arrested Development is back on the air. Or, not the airwaves, really. The cult sitcom that ran for three seasons and was then cancelled (some nonsense about not enough people watching) came back to life this weekend via Netflix.
The word uncancelled is relatively new, but it comes up a lot in conversation about TV shows, especially cult programs that died before their time.
In the last few years, we've seen the resurrection of Futurama (major network to cable), Family Guy (ditto) and Beavis and Butthead (off the air for 14 years).
We saw cancelled series Firefly get a big-screen adaptation, which also failed to clean up, but spread the cult following for both show and film.
Cougar Town died on network TV but was picked up by TBS. It's also not uncommon for a show to get canned by one network only to find life on another - the earliest of these was Get Smart back in the 1960s, but starting in the '90s it became common for shows about forensic investigators or psychic detectives to jump networks.
The trend in most of these revivals has been shows moving from the centre to the periphery. A middling show on one network is picked up by a smaller network, a cable channel, or a satellite channel. The core audience for the show will usually follow favourite characters up the dial.
Now the shows are escaping television altogether. Arrested Development is being re-built by Netflix, which streams TV directly to your home for a monthly fee.
The move to uncancel shows is one of the signs of the slow death of quality on network television.
It's not that you can't find excellent shows on the major networks. There's, well, Parks and Recreation is good, and, um.
The networks have found what works for them are shows that appeal to a broad swath of people, offend almost no one, and which can be watched without any investment in an ongoing story.
I don't mind an episode of Castle, for example, but don't try to ask me what the plot was a week later. A lot of network television is well acted, slickly shot, decently written, and ultimately boring.
Television that is interesting and cutting edge, pretty much by definition is going to bring in a smaller audience than something that is comfortingly familiar.
Cult shows used to see write-in campaigns to save them from cancellation.
Now fans don't have to write to executives. They can vote with their wallets. Netflix isn't bringing back Arrested Development because they like the show, they want to attract more subscribers.
And if there isn't a money-minded benefactor, fans can take the reins themselves.
The teen detective noir show Veronica Mars was cancelled after three seasons. It's now getting a film version, thanks to $5.7 million raised from fans through Kickstarter.
This kind of thing trickles down. I didn't give money to the Veronica Mars movie project, but I have given money to a guy named Kyle Kallgren. I like the videos he's made online, and he's making a short film about time travel and politics, called Election Cycle. He raised a humble $16,000 for his project.
Never heard of Kallgren? Doesn't matter, I have, and I want to see more of his stuff. If there's a creator out there that you like, there's now ways to support them directly.
This kind of thing isn't going to kill off NCIS or Big Bang Theory, but it is chipping away slowly at the foundations of TV.
If writers and directors take their ideas to the masses, how long will it be before they don't need the networks at all?
Matthew Claxton is a reporter for the Langley Advance.
