We live in a day and age when a lot of former TV shows are making their way back to television. A lot of these remakes, reboots and spinoffs have made their way to Netflix, as the streaming platform offers ample opportunity to remake a show exactly the way the actors and creator want to. Recently, we caught up with Mark-Paul Gosselaar during a Q&A at the Gasparilla Film Festival and asked the longtime TV actor if there are any of his big projects he’d love to see return via a streaming platform. His answer might surprise you...
I’d love to do a Netflix series for Franklin & Bash. Breckin would be on board for that too. Actually, I’m working with the showrunner, creator of Franklin & Bash on my Fox thing, Kevin Falls, who was on West Wing and Journeyman, and I actually said to him, I said, we have to do a reboot of Franklin & Bash. He’s on board.
If the cast and the showrunner are all on board to reboot the former TNT drama, Netflix should just shell out and go for it, right? OK, OK. We all know the negotiations for bringing back a TV series can be difficult if both parties aren’t on the same page. Plus Franklin & Bash closed shop way back in 2014 and the actors and creative team have moved on to new projects in the time since. We also know no actual negotiations are happening at this point, but a lot of people were fans of the fun legal duo and would probably revel in the chance to see the two pals back on the small screen again.
Although fans would be excited about the return of Franklin & Bash, a revival might be good news for more than just the original fans. Mark-Paul Gosselaar also says there is a reason that Netflix would be a better home for the legal drama.
For us, Franklin & Bash, for Breckin [Meyer] and I, creatively was, just not, it didn’t hit the mark, financially it certainly didn’t hit the mark, because we were doing cable, 10 episodes a year. We always wanted to do Franklin & Bash, the way it should be, as Netflix show, as an HBO show. Those characters are too damn good to have been on a cable network where we couldn’t push. It could have been Entourage. It should have been Entourage. These guys have, these two characters, I just love them. Every time I talk about it with Breckin, we smile and currently we’re developing something together, because we love working together, but these characters are just too good. They have all this power. They’re attorneys in Los Angeles who do well for themselves. They should be representing celebrities. they should be representing all these… So I see that Entourage value.
While I don’t think any of us need any more Entourage in our lives, the point Mark-Paul Gosselaar made during his promotion for new movie Precious Cargo is that Franklin & Bash was a great bromance on TNT, but it could have been darker or edgier on another network. It could have been gutsier. It could have taken more chances… you get the point. Netflix offers a unique opportunity to reinvent a series—which is how programs like Longmire have become edgier after moving to the streaming service. It’s a concept that may not work for all reboots--Fuller House is similar to Full House for instance—but it’s pretty cool that Netflix is giving showrunners and actors way more creative freedom than most other TV networks.
While no Franklin & Bash reunion is in sight, we do know what else Netflix has coming up.
Photo courtesy of GIFF 2016.
