Revivals, reboots and remakes of movies are going to be all over our TVs once the fall schedule begins rolling out. While revivals have increasingly found themselves to be popular with the networks, this week we learned that one of the series in the works, Coach, has gotten canceled by the network. Even though it was given a straight-to-series order several months ago, we will no longer be getting new episodes of Coach.
While the show had already been given a 13-episode order, apparently, Coach was not all that far along in production. A pilot was filmed, after which the NBC team—which is quite fond of test groups—decided to reevaluate whether or not Coach should actually come back to TV. Deadline is reporting that some who saw the first episode actually felt it was “dated,” although I’m not sure how a revival of an 18-year-old show with the same tone and characters could feel modern in any way, shape, or form. Surely, NBC knew what this would look like before the company signed on?
Coach was expected to premiere at midseason this year, and if we had gotten new episodes of the show, Craig T. Nelson would have reprised his role as Hayden Fox, a coach who comes out of retirement to help his son to coach a Pennsylvania Ivy League college. Hayden was expected to be an assistant coach during this new series. The show would have been a mix of new and old characters, as it was recently revealed that Bill Fagerbakke and Pam Stone would reprise their roles on Coach. Malcolm Barrett and Morgan Smith had also joined the program.
We may not be getting new Coach episodes, but there are still plenty of revivals, reboots and remakes coming our way this TV season. NBC will still be in the game with Heroes Reborn, a new take on the series Heroes featuring some original and new characters. Netflix is giving Full House a spinoff called Fuller House. CBS is reworking the movie Limitless for TV and Fox is doing the same with Minority Report. And there have been whispers about a possible Married with Children revival for months, now.
While Coach was extremely popular, the one thing it doesn’t have in common with projects like Fuller House is that it hasn’t maintained its popularity over time. There’s no real feeling of nostalgia on the internet related to the comedy and it hasn’t survived in reruns the way the Tanner gang has. When it was first announced, the Coach revival felt like more of a way to get Craig T. Nelson back on the air after Parenthood ended its run than anything else. The straight-to-series order was a surprise, and while some fans might be disappointed, I’m not shocked that NBC ultimately changed its mind (similar to how the network has treated Emerald City).
If you’d like to see when the reboots that are returning will hit the schedule, check out our fall TV premiere schedule.
