The Cutprice Guignol

So, earlier this year, I wrote about the death of the monster of the week, and just what a sad thing it’s been to witness as a lover of episodic genre fiction. And, as I was pondering on that today, I recalled that we’re getting a couple of reboots in the coming years of shows that helped define the monster of the week on television, namely, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The X-Files. And we’ve already covered here on the Guignol why those upcoming returns aren’t exactly a good idea, it got me to thinking – if the monster of the week was to have a comeback, what shows of days past would I want to see leading the charge? Let’s get into a few of the monster of the week modern classics that I think could jumpstart the genre (and hopefully give you a few recommendations for MOTW TV in the process!).

Sleepy Hollow

Listen here: first things first, I only want this show to come back if Nicole Beharie’s Abbie Mills makes a return from the dead, no questions asked. I don’t care how many rules you have to break to make it happen – without both her and Tom Mison at the helm of this show, I’d strike it entirely from this list. Tom Mison (world’s most beautiful man, at least in that wig) and Beharie star as a revived Ichabod Crane and the modern cop who calls on his help to deal with the increasingly-weird supernatural goings-on in the small town of, you guessed it, Sleepy Hollow. Using the book and its historical setting as a grab-bag of fun monsters and villains and tossing some fantastic big bads at the wall (I mean, in the most enthusiastic way possible what is a thesp John Noble doing here?), Sleepy Hollow embraces the gorgeously gothic source material to enormous effect. Mison and Beharie’s insanely brilliant platonic chemistry puts me in mind of some other offbeat procedural favourites like Johnathan Creek and Death Valley.

Primeval

The children crave dinosaurs. And by children, I mean me. Yes, I’ve already espoused a bit about why I love Primeval as much as I do, but I truly think it’s time for this underrated British teatime classic to make a comeback. On two conditions, though: the effects have to be just as dreadful as they were the first time around, and the backstory just as convoluted. I want to see Douglas Henshall return as the preposterously-named and mildly tortured lead Nick Cutter as him and his shiny-toothed team of heroes potter about London and the surrounding area trying to stop people getting scoffed by poorly-rendered errant dinosaurs. The throughline of Cutter searching for his missing wife was one I actually found pretty effective and grounding for a show as daft as this, and Henshall always brought a bit of prestige to proceedings that I’d love to see him get another crack at. There was something about the prehistoric creatures that served as the villains for this series that scratched an itch in my Walking With Dinosaurs-obsessed brain, and, even if that might not be as prominent as it once was, I am more than happy to re-start my crush on Ben Miller to help move things along.

Warehouse 13

Warehouse 13 is just pure nerd indulgence and makes no bones (no, don’t mention Bones, for God’s sake, or David Boreanez might manifest in my house to bore me to death) about that fact. A weird splicing of The X-Files and Indiana Jones, Warehouse 13 follows two government agents (played by Joanne Kelly and Eddie McClintock) assigned to the mysterious Warehouse 13 to manage the comings and goings of supernatural artifacts both old and new. Warehouse 13 jumps into folklore, history, and sci-fi with equal glee – when it comes to the artifacts being hunted down and contained week-to-week, we’re talking everything from the original Time Machine to Pandora’s actual Box, with smatterings of classical stories re-imagined along the way (Alice Liddel as a serial killer? Sure, why not!) in a superb monster-of-the-week format that’s almost impossibly moreish. Full of cameos from various actors with major geek clout (everyone from James Marsters to Jewel Staite) and superb writers like Jane Espenson and Drew Greenberg, if you love genre TV, Warehouse 13 loves you right back.

I would love to hear about the MOTW shows you think would help jump-start the genre once more, and it’s not only because I’m secretly always looking for an excuse to add fifteen more to my watchlist. Let me know in the comments below!

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(header image via IMDB)